Vestiges

The gravel drive has mostly returned to a grass track -

perhaps not so different from the way it was in 1908

when Frank Bstandig was signing his name to the back

of a pine stair riser that may or may not have been

new timber at the time - maybe it was saved and set aside

from some other house, kicked and scuffed by other feet

before it was fitted in as the eighth step of fourteen

to the four upstairs bedrooms, will be gouged and chipped

by the ups and downs of three generations of Snyder children

before it comes to rest under my art room workbench.

The lilacs that Leonard planted for Wilma the spring before

he stepped out of the tractor and lay down in the grass

and never got up, have grown up to those bedroom windows,

mostly dead wood now with elm and hackberry grown in—

but something is blooming, something is sweet on the May breeze—

not the haggard snowball bush, full of dark, naked limbs -

or the two remaining alliums with audacious purple globes -

not the single yellow iris nearly choked out by brome grass -

it’s the old mock orange at the bottom of the east yard,

full of blooms and bees and looking just the same,

just the same as when Grandma sat rocking, rocking in her chair

looking out towards the sunrise, over the horizon,

through the wavy glass of the double windows

that have been removed, the weights cut out and left to lie

with the bits of lumber and scrap that no one can see

any good use for now, though surely old Frank

would have wedged them in a nest of straw under his wagon seat -

might even have taken this house apart board by board

back in 1908, but no one anymore has the time or patience,

and the window weights and the studs and floor joists,

plaster and lath will all be razed and buried

in the span of a few hours - and all that will remain

to mark the one hundred and sixteen years this house stood

on the home place will be some ancient fruit trees,

a faint grass track, and for a few warm days in May,

the glinting scent of mock orange blossoms on the wind.

May 2024

There have been many goodbyes over the years and I know this isn’t the last, last goodbye to the home place because even when the house is buried and the site smoothed out and grass has overtaken the sepia colored soil, this piece of land will throw up the spirit of the crooked yellow house and of Grandma standing at the door, squinting in the sun to see which of her family was coming down the drive. I know that image will be here anytime I return, but I also know I carry it in my mind’s eye because iterations of this dear place have been coming off my pen and paintbrush for weeks.

I didn’t plan to drive down to Grandma’s house last Friday, it just happened... I think perhaps I was called back, as early in the week I smelled something sweet and familiar on the breeze on my way to the mailbox and realized that the one remaining Russian olive tree in the fencerow down the road must be blooming. If I’m lucky, I catch it in bloom for one or two days each year. There used to be half a dozen in a row but the county pushed out all but part of one several years ago and it has gone on living and blooming despite being completely toppled by the backhoe they use to “clean up” the road sides. Russian olive is considered an invasive species in Nebraska, and despite that fact, I find the silver-leaved tree so beautiful and exotic looking that I’ve been tempted many times to try planting it in my yard.

I visited the tree for a few moments, standing still while bees of all sizes bobbed around me in the sticky yellow blossoms. I tried to think of how to describe the scent and decided that maybe it was a mixture of lilac and honey but I think I was probably influenced by the bees.. there is something heavenly about it on the breeze though, while up close it is almost cloying.

The same sort of ambrosial scent was in the air as I climbed over the fence and walked down the drive to Grandma’s house a few days later and I thought maybe there was a Russian olive growing in the gulley though it would have been hard to see. Instead of going straight inside I slowly wandered around the outside of the house, hunting for old plants and taking photos.

Seven years is plenty of time for nature to begin to reclaim what was hers and most things in the yard and garden that Grandma worked so hard to grow and cultivate have disappeared or are dead and dying.. .. it’s humbling to see how quickly fifty years of effort is undone. A number of the larger trees have survived including the linden tree Grandma planted for me the year I was born and enterprising young elm and locust trees that seeded themselves near the foundation over the years, left alone at last after seasons and seasons of being pruned and hacked back, have shot up to the roof in a speed and manner that plants only seem to possess when they know they’re unwanted.

If you had the interest or patience to read the poem above, you’ll know that the perfume in the air was from the mock orange bush in the east yard and it did smell remarkably like the Russian olive until I got up close and again, stood with the bees, dipping my nose into flowers which did not smell of honey, but a cross between wild roses and apple and citrus blossoms. The bush was taller and more spreading than I remembered but didn’t seem any the worse for being left to her own devices for seven years - she looked healthy and vigorous and completely at home in this yard which had grown so wild.

Inside, there’s very little left that made this Grandma’s house, or our family’s “home place,” and I needed to see it this way and to know that we had taken out and saved much of what we loved about the house - and that what will be buried in a few weeks time, are only the bones and facade.. of course the rooms still hold memories but I found myself drawn to the windows, to the views and scenes outside the house, to the blue-painted kitchen windows where Grandma stood washing dishes each morning, afternoon, and evening - to the front room windows where she rocked and watched the sun rise and the birds come to her feeders, the bathroom window where I found one last inspirational passage taped to the frame.

I think this passage was a last gift that Grandma left us - I know it felt and feels like an offering to me and to my mom when I shared it with her - even after we had removed so many from other parts of the house, had found so many tucked in books and her bible.. this one is the last the house held and it went straight to my heart... it’s taped to the beautiful fluted window casing we saved from her piano room in my art room and below my worktable lies the legendary (to our family) piece of lumber signed by Frank J Bstandig in 1908 when he finished building the house that Grandma would make our family home for more than fifty years.