More Storage

The Graveyard

When I’m away I miss that overgrown section of yard at the edge of the woods where lawn and field overlap. This is the place where hawks will circle near the treetops, where the pine and spruce form a dark green corner for the shadows and sunlight to mingle. The world is quiet here most days, the only movement the ripple of tall field grass when the wind brushes through, the way a hand will sweep the fur of a favorite pet. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

When I lived at home, I would visit that graveyard when I wanted quiet, when I wanted to be in a place where being was all that mattered or was. I’d sit or stand in front of those crosses at the bottom of the little hill with the mountain alder, its leafy frame small and strange beneath the needled trees. The crosses stood in a row–slender, haphazardly nailed branches and boards collected from the yard or shed–like wooden soldiers, weather-worn and later broken by heavy snow. At first there were only a couple, but they multiplied slowly over the years to three and four and maybe five. The graves themselves were small and covered with heavy stones from the rock pile behind the shed. After the digging and placing of stones and crosses, though, it was difficult to find the graves in the months and years of summer field overgrowth and forgetful snowmobiles snapping off the tops of crosses beneath the snow.

Still, I came to visit. Or just sit, and think, or wander around the hill and into the woods, weaving through the trees and looping back out again. Out here is where my cats, one by one, went missing–disappearing mysteriously, quietly, finally. All except for Jewel, the calico who still remembers me well on the rare occasions I visit. Both she and my dog, Missy, used to follow me out here, a patch of black hair on the dog’s back rising at the awareness of what might be lurking nearby–a possible bear, a moose, a coyote. She was always assuming the role of protector–even the time when the neighbor’s dogs chased one of our wandering rabbits back into the yard, and she snapped at the dogs instead of the rabbit, driving them home. Years later, though, they would trespass and kill one of the rabbits anyway, her limp body laid out beside the lawnmower, two feet from the rabbit hutch.

All the graves were filled with rabbits: rabbits who were prey, rabbits who were euthanized, rabbits who were killed after birth by their mothers. Rabbits who ate raspberries and celery, dug holes in the garden, braved the garden hose, the trampoline, the fishing net. One by one, when the time came, we placed them in plastic containers and shoe boxes lined with hay and hand towels, clover and grass clippings. We filled a rusted wheelbarrow with rocks, cobbled together our hand-made crosses, set shovel to soil, put them into the ground.

When my dog died, she didn’t go in the ground. She simply seemed to disappear, having been present for eleven years, after dying of cancer or some other disease no one noticed until she was days and then hours from the end. When I visit, I expect to see her sitting on the porch, still unable to process the fact that what’s left of Missy is actually deduced to two white, unlabeled cardboard boxes the size of Chinese takeout containers–filled with what I am told are her ashes and stashed behind the family photos on top of the china cabinet.

All these years, no one could think of a better place to put those boxes–or the ashes, or the bodies, for that matter.

Storage

An exercise from Old Friend From Far Away by Natalie Goldberg.

Tell me about a storage unit or someplace you stored things.

One thing I’ll always miss about home is the Christmas tree. More than the holiday itself, it was that living room conifer growing heavy with laughter and light in its stand that made the holidays my favorite time of year.

Granted, I was taken in by the rest, as well: the gradual build-up of gifts and cards and white packed snow and Christmas spirit; the shopping and spending and wrapping and bows; the holiday dinner with turkey and ham and wine and bread and too many people; the party on New Year’s Eve with the snap of pool cues, late-night cards, hide-and-seek in the dark, errant fireworks on the cold white lawn. The words everyone felt but nobody said.

But there was something about the tree that made it worthwhile, something in those heavy green branches, the spicy scent of pine or spruce, the lights, the glitz, the ornaments.

The attic. Crawling precariously over a skeleton of boards and pink fiberglass insulation, rustling through boxes, searching for the ones without pumpkins and witches and bats, Easter eggs, white rabbits, birthday greetings. And when we found the wreaths and garlands, half carrying, half dropping the awkward cardboard receptacles down the stairs. We worked in teams–my mother and brother and I, box from person to person to person, out of the attic, down the stairs. In the end we’d sit on the living room floor, the old warped and water-stained box of decorations on the fireplace hearth, pulling old ornaments from their compartments. From stone to cardboard to synthetics to skin.

Decorating was my favorite part, and there was lots to work with–the lights with their six different flash settings for entertainment, the furry gold snakes of garlands, the shiny rainbow of painted tin balls, the silver points. There were those whose origins I barely remembered: crocheted snowflakes, lace-covered candy canes, tiny wooden-framed cross-stitchings. There were candy wreaths, macaroni wreaths, baked gingerbread snowmen. There were balls swirled with paint and ribbon I’d made with a friend, little felt bears slightly stuffed and stitched with smiles and clothes and bells that moved, a clothespin nutcracker, a wooden sleigh. A white sand dollar hand-painted with glitter and tiny poinsettias, requiring the strongest branch on the tree, and my favorite–two baby seals on a patch of ice–that got center stage. The star glowed many different colors and sat on top, the presents seemed to radiate, everything was bright–even when the rest of life wasn’t.

When Christmas was over, we’d pile the gifts in our rooms and sweep up the needles and put each ornament back in its own little room in a warped cardboard house, our memories packed in the attic with scraps of glass and plastic and fabric in a fiberglass castle, a cold and quiet dark.