Memoir / Chapter 1
Last night I dreamt I went to the old farm again. It seemed to me that I stood by the old wooden gate at the head of the driveway, and for awhile I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain across the gate. I called out for someone to come and unlock the gate, but no one answered.
Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed suddenly of a supernatural ability to slip through the gate and pass through the barrier before me, unfettered. The drive was not straight the way I remembered it had been, but wound around before me, twisting and turning. As I continued to travel down this unfamiliar path I became aware of several changes; it was narrow and unkempt, not at all the neatly manicured path that it had been. Nature had taken over and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers. The trees and the brush had crowded, uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The drive was a ribbon now, a thread of its' former self, the gravel surface all worn off, and choked with grass and moss. The trees had thrown out low branches, the roots were like gnarled skeleton claws.
At first, I was puzzled and did not understand, but as my dream began to unfold, I began to understand these twists and turns to represent the journey that my life had been, the trees and brush had been the challenges I had faced in all these long years since those days of my youth spent on the Kent farm.
At long last I spied the house. There was no welcoming fire in the chimney. The bright, cheery sunflowers that had always waved in silent welcome from the front garden were long gone. The yellow paint now tired and peeling, the farmhouse stood silent and forlorn.
Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy; especially that of the dreamer. As I stood there in the moonlight, hushed and still, I could swear that the old house was not an empty shell, but lived and breathed again as it had before. Suddenly the old, cracking paint grew brighter, lights came on in the house and the curtains blew softly in the night breeze of a temperate Kansas spring evening.
The rooms would bear witness to our existence. The little heap of books that served as research for an article, a discarded copy of the Daily Planet, coffee cups, cushions with the imprint of our heads on them, the charred embers of our log fire still smoldering in the grate. And Shelby would be there, stretched out on the floor in front of the fire, lazily waiting for Clark or the children to play fetch.
A cloud that I hadn't noticed passed over the house, obscuring the moonlight, and hovered for a moment, like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it, and the lights in the windows were extinguished. I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past.
When I thought of the house in my waking hours, I was not bitter. I would remember the perfume of the gardens in summer, the birds that sang at dawn. The delicious aromas of bacon and pancakes cooking on the griddle, and freshly brewed coffee. Sunsets viewed lazily from the porch swing. And love.
These memories were permanent and could not be dissolved. All this I resolved in my dream, while the clouds scuttled across the face of the moon, for like most sleepers, I knew that I dreamed. In reality, I lay many miles away, in alien surroundings, and would wake soon, in a bare little hospital room. I will stretch and turn and open my eyes, bewildered by the glittering sun. The hard, clear sky will be so different then that moonlight of my dream. The day will stretch out before me, long and uneventful. For I am now an old woman and the adventures of my youth are a thing long passed. Not so for Clark; he remains ever youthful. Even if he did age as the rest of us, I should still see him as the same handsome man that won my heart so long ago. It's a funny thing, that he treats me as though he sees me as a young woman still. That's the purity of his heart—his ability to really see people. So in our hearts and in my dreams we are young together still.