It was one of those gorgeous summer weekends on my parents’ western New York farm. As I sat sipping coffee and looking out the kitchen window, my eyes went from porch to tree, bush to garden, as I remembered little childhood hiding places and play areas. Myriad emotions tugged me in different directions as I stared out at those childhood hideaways. For one thing, I was making mental plans for my upcoming wedding—delightful plans for colors and flowers and duplicate toasters. But then my eyes rested on the barn, and I felt that sick feeling again. Was I really going to walk out of my parents’ lives at a time like this?
“What are you sitting here worrying about?” Mom came up behind me and gave her worrier a warm hug. She always knew thinking from worrying somehow.
“Oh . . . that barn,” I said.
“I knew it,” she shook her head in sympathy. “Well, let’s not trouble ourselves on this beautiful day. The Lord will help us think of something. Why don’t you have a piece of this cake? I want you to take some back to your apartment too.”
Wasn’t that just like Mom! Leave everything to the Lord, set aside things that need to be struggled with, and make sure everyone has cake.
That barn! It stood a dizzying three stories high. It had been designed well over a hundred years ago to accommodate livestock and hay and for fruit storage. But since my parents were no longer working the farm, they used it only to store machinery and tools. And the many winters and springs—the howling, rainy winds and snowstorms—had taken their toll on the barn despite Dad’s attempts to patch and repair. Seeping water had caused the old stone-and-concrete foundation to begin moving and crumbling away from the wooden walls, leaving gaps. Frayed wiring provided electricity to the barn, the yellowed bulbs shining upon stored papers and junk. And the firetrap stood uncomfortably close to the house.
Yet how difficult to think of the barn as a hazard when I could remember so well the smell of the sun-warm boards of this, my haunted castle, my dance studio, my Kentucky stables. I had watched Dad build things in that barn with his treasure of shining tools and evil-sounding machines. I had drawn with chalk on the great sliding doors, painted my bike red on the west step. In the loft, I’d even composed a love song that now caused me to blush. But the usefulness of my barn-friend for play or for work had ended. It perched on its precarious points, waiting.
Dad came into the kitchen, blinking and sniffing deeply. He knew that the time had come for the barn to go. As I sat down across from him, I felt an aching sadness. So much was changing—even Dad. Something in me tried to force into my mind the image of Dad as he used to be: muscular, jet-black hair, large-featured handsomeness; a rider of motorcycles, a builder of things, an inventor. There was so much for me to be wildly proud of as a child—and I was still proud of him. But the graying man before me seemed smaller, older somehow.
“Dad,” I began carefully, “what do you suppose it would cost to hire someone to take that barn down for you?”
“More’n I’ve got,” he quipped. (I already knew the direction this conversation was going.)
“How about if we got some men from the church to help us do it?”
“I don’t want anyone getting hurt on that thing.”
“What about you?” I demanded. “I don’t want you to get hurt either!”
“I haven’t broken my neck on the Ark yet.” Dad chuckled and settled back into his chair as if to close the subject. He had taken to calling the aging barn “the Ark.” And a more stubborn Noah, I mused, there never was.
“Dad, I could help with the money. We could hire someone . . .”
“No!” He sat bolt upright now. “I got a certain way I want it done. The top beams can’t be sawed or broken. I’m going to use them on the new garage I’m going to build. I know how wrecking crews like to do things. No, by ginger!”
“But, Dad . . .”
“Me and the Lord can take down the Ark.” I knew by the way he sat back and looked away that the subject was very much closed.
“I’m going to come home every weekend and help ‘you and the Lord,’ Dad,” I informed him. I didn’t know how though. One of us was a thin office girl with a built-in fear of heights.
That next Saturday I arrived early, and Dad met me at the porch door. He had to smile at my work clothes and determined expression.
“I figure we’ll start taking things out today,” he said. We spent the weekend sifting through dusty objects. There were books, bottomless chairs, chicken feeders, rusty veterinary objects. We laughed at old feed bag designs, argued over what was or wasn’t an antique, and told stories connected with some of the curios we found, such as the cougar-shaped lamp an uncle had won at the carnival.
After two weekends of sifting and sorting, we had the shed full of salvageable things and a great heap to be burned. The two tractors and their attachments had been placed in an easily accessible area just inside the barn’s basement door. Much equipment still remained inside; we had barely scratched the surface, even though most of the valuable things had been removed. But we still faced the main goal of getting the old barn torn down.
That Sunday evening I again stood staring at the looming structure. Mom and Dad were an acre away, walking arm in arm, checking on their fruit trees. They had begun to call this “taking the tour.” I could hear them arguing coyly and good-naturedly about how the apple trees should be trimmed, a topic on which they never agreed. They seemed totally oblivious to the problem of the barn. As I watched their distant forms move on to the next group of trees, I felt as if I were the mother hen and they—these parents whom I loved so fiercely—were the wandering, curious chicks, wobbling into misfortune before I could see and intervene. Often, lately, I was annoyed with them for neglecting themselves, for not eating better, for growing older.
I sat on the grass feeling helpless. I would be getting married in less than two months. Soon after the honeymoon, I would be leaving for the West, where my husband would finish college. How would this leveling of the barn ever get done? Shouldn’t I be where I was really needed? And yet what good would my frail presence be on a job such as this? It all seemed so hopeless.
In the weeks that followed, I got caught up in the commotion of preparing for a wedding. When I wasn’t busy with lists and errands, I would pause and think happily of the wonderful, tall, blond landscape architect who was making it all possible: Michael. Together we reveled in the great heap of bridal shower gifts (he complained to me that fishing equipment was never a present—just kitchen stuff). We made plans and occasionally retreated to the movies.
I put the barn problem aside for the most part, remembering it occasionally and then following Mom around, whining about what could happen. She would shake her head, admitting that she had no answers for me. She simply said, “Let’s leave it with the Lord.”
The wedding day came and went in a joyous, kaleidoscopic blur. We were off, then, on a carefree, monthlong honeymoon, camping like gleeful gypsies around the perimeter of Nova Scotia. Swept away by the patchwork landscape of eastern Canada and my brand-new husband, tan and tousled from walking the warm beaches, I admit I gave not one fleeting thought to the barn.
Soon it was time to begin the drive back home. I could hardly wait to tell the folks of clam digging and the day we’d made clam chowder in a bucket, of ferry rides and people we’d met—like John and Alex, the coal miners who had sung for us at our campfire.
Finally, we reached the town of Ripley. One by one we passed the friendly old landmarks: the stately school, Rice’s Hardware Store, State Street’s tracks.
As we rounded the curve of our tree-lined driveway, my eyes saw the sight, but my brain reeled with disbelief. There, where the huge barn had towered, was a flat, squatty pile of rubble with the roof on top of it all. Dad was grinning from atop that roof when we drove in, and he hopped to the ground with welcoming shouts.
Mom hurried out, a damp dish towel in her hands, and soon we were hugging and kissing. In the midst of it all, I couldn’t help but marvel at how Dad had managed to get the barn down.
“Had a big windstorm last week,” he said. “The Lord decided to take ’er down without my help. And lookit there . . .” I gazed in wonder as he pointed to the peaked portion of the roof that had gently protected the tractors when the structure had collapsed. “Not only is the equipment okay, but look at those roof beams.”
I walked over to see that not one beam had been broken in the fall. Dad could disassemble them while standing barely four feet off the ground. And yet the happy expressions on my parents’ faces were not ones of awe but of faithful satisfaction. And that was how they smiled at me now as I stood with Michael’s arm gently around my shoulder.
“Funniest thing is,” Dad said, lowering his head and scrunching up his shoulders like a mischievous little boy, “she never made much of a sound when she went! We slept right through the whole thing!”
And little wonder. If the Lord took this good of care of my trusting parents, he surely wouldn’t wish to disturb their sleep.