Introduction

 I remember thirty years ago as a high point. Our lives ebb and flow like the tide. But that time period was like one long sunny day, calm and pleasant, and we basked in the joy of that interlude. We had just purchased a house on two acres in the country and the promises it held were a bit overwhelming. It was all good, even the work we saw at every turn.

We were all together in that first year: my mother, father, myself and our schnauzer. It wouldn't be as good again. And it had never been so good before.

We didn't know the house as Pinehaven yet. In fact my mother had not yet become “Miss Mary” but the personality was surely formed many years before. The fiestiness, the biting edge was already sharpening its teeth. Hers was a good-natured snarl and we knew that her bark held a deep-throated smile.

Dad was retired and at 63 was already receiving Social Security for his debilitating arthritis. A lifetime spent in the grocery business – hands in a cold locker of meat and produce – left him early disabled. We didn't count the years remaining. What would we have done differently if we'd have known his number was down to twenty-four?

Mom, too, a year younger than he, would tackle the work as a younger woman might. The spot that was to become our garden was buried in weeds. The clothes line was not yet up (and would not last long anyway). A woodpile threaded its way across the back yard and another hugged the back edge of the garage. The garden would be dug, the damp clothing hung, the woodpiles moved..

I grew trimmer still with the work and set about making the two acres into our own. I planted pines – dozens of them – and gave the house its name. Forget that the climate has changed and few remain. My intent was good, the tree stock less willing to work with the land than I.

I would continue working in retail for another eight years and then, at age 46, would step away forever. I chose time over money and if my future purchases were forced to be small, my treasures have built up untold.

So, misfits all. Those few ties we had, we cut.

But then, only a year later, our dog died. In 2011 Dad followed. Another six years, Mom, too.

With the ghost of memories gathered around me I look back

Enter Tom. We found each by unknowingly looking for each other and for the past six years have been inseparable. Tom joined me full-time at Pinehaven a year ago.

And so the people have changed but the place has stayed the same. This nineteenth century building that surrounds us has seen others come on go. It is the only constant.

I think of the rock I can see in the basement, peering where the furnace registers snake beneath the house, snuggled in a too-tight place, a natural platform on which the weight of the house sits. Who decided to leave it there, even make use of it when the house was built? Didn't he smile and say to himself “Well, that's not going anywhere”. And a century and a third later, his words still ring true

That rock is a constant reminder to me. What ideas have we rolled into place that were so good as to support years of activity? What action have we taken that left a perennial mark? What sleight of hand changed someone's world?

I often pick up a stone and wonder how it got there. Was it moved haphazardly by a glacier, dropped there tens of thousands of years ago? And those larger rocks that line the margins of farmer's fields are evidence of human thought. How long have they lain there? Who was it that last handed them? How many years have they weathered in that self-same spot?

But aren't we all weathering in place?

When we moved to Pinehaven I marveled at a number of large trees to the north of the house. It was an area that was unimproved but had been recently mowed. We called it “the meadow” though it is now nothing of the sort. It's an area grown wild with weeds, saplings, honeysuckle and grape vines, a tree lot. Tom and I have spent countless hours trying to reclaim it.

In my lifetime I've watched both of the largest trees there fail. The one closest to the road was topped by a freak storm and it still bears the marks of a lightning strike, a searing wound from top (what is left of it) to bottom that slashed the tree like an electric knife and left a lasting scar. A large plank of bark was blown off and lay beside tree until Tom carried it to the yard, marveling at the sheer size of it and all in one piece. It reminded me of a surfboard as he carried it over his head, in both thickness and length.

I didn't see the other tree toppled by a storm but its top fell, too. Perhaps it stood long enough and simply tired of holding its branches aloft? The effect was the same. Both trees were similarly shortened. And without tops, the rest had no future.

Aren't we meeting a similar fate? What the storms of life haven't damaged, time itself has worn away.

Between those trees I planted two rows of sugar maples. I figured I'd be able to have a sugar bush in my old age, It's thirty years later and my old age has arrived and though the trees are perhaps twenty feet high, they're still not mature enough to tap. So I've found it's true that we plant trees for the future. But not always ours.

Miss Mary collected books. “I’ll have them to read in my old age,” she often said. I believe she actually read most of them – perhaps all - and certainly those she most cherished.

Dad collected nothing but memories and he never failed to regale some comic episode from his past. As painful as his arthritis was, he found the laughter of medicine the surest elixir. He could always smile, and he did, often and for hours.

When we first moved to Pinehaven, it was a New Year's Day and it was as cold as might be expected. With the temperature never leaving the thirties, we carried furniture into the empty house from cars and rented truck, like worker ants, one after the other. Even with a light rain that hampered our efforts in the mid-afternoon, we were mostly in place by evening.

How is it that every piece of furniture knows where it goes? Of course the size of the piece and the length of the wall – and certainly the location of doorways and windows - defines the space, but we found each piece set down pretty much remained where it was originally placed.

Now, over three decades later, it's basically unchanged. Oh, a piece or two has been replaced, a few more given away and surely an item or two added, but the way our moving crew (family) set the piece down initially on that January day, was where it expected to be and where it remains.

I remember Miss Mary made a meal for all the workers as the final pieces came in the back door. Cooking was her pride and even with the busyness of the day, she took time to cook. I figure that meal was followed by at least 22,000 similar ones.

She never failed to fix an early breakfast, both in my remaining working years and those since, and she always cooked lunch. It was not our habit to ever have a late meal. We just snacked. Of course there was time-out for a few vacations (very few) and in the final year I did my own share of the cooking.

One day, after Dad was gone, we were going somewhere and she took her seat in the back of the car behind the passenger seat. It made our conversations easier because I could turn and see her. We thought how similar this has become to “Driving Miss Daisy” and sure enough we began calling it “Driving Miss Mary”.

Tom bought me a chauffeurs cap, even complete with a 1949 silver badge, the year of my birth.

And so she always took that seat and I often donned my cap and probably offered a few chuckles to fellow motorists. And when the driving wasn’t underway, the Miss Mary moniker stuck. When she made a particularly biting remark, or one that was simply memorable, I’d jot it down and post it on my Facebook page as a Miss Mary Moment.

These went on from 2012 to when she died in 2017. In five years I found I had posted 75 in all. Many of the barbs were unintentional. She was just being herself. None were hateful, though some might seem to be. All were gentle reminders that Miss Mary was still in charge.

© 2021 William G Schmidt