Sarah Nigbor

I dislike goodbyes. I’ve never been one to want a long, lingering goodbye. For one thing, they’re often sad. I’m a sentimental, sensitive person, but I prefer to make goodbyes short and sweet and process my feelings in private.

My uncle, aunt and mother are about to finalize the sale of my grandparents’ hobby farm, the place where I grew up. It’s unfortunately necessary, because my mother can’t live alone anymore due to health issues. I wish I could afford to buy it, but I can’t. Neither can my cousins. The past year and a half has been the slow process of emptying the house, moving Mom to assisted living, painting the interior and cleaning out the outbuildings. We’ve taken our time doing it, because it’s a huge job. It’s just so difficult to say goodbye.

Recently I walked into the granary that my grandpa had converted into a woodshop. I didn’t expect the strong emotions to flood over me like a tidal wave. Maybe it was because the shop smelled exactly as it used to – a mix of sawdust, varnish and woodsmoke. My grandpa has been gone for 12 years and the shop unused for longer (he had a bigger, newer woodshop he built in the barn), but the scent was just as I remembered it. I half expected to turn around and find him standing there smiling at me, calling me “Snooks” like he used to. I spent hours in that shop with him, sitting at his feet near the warmth of the woodstove, pushing shavings around with my fingers. When I was older, he let me help him clean the shop and taught me how to apply stain and varnish to wood.

I found a couple of notes he had tacked to the wall. One was talking about the weather from 1992: the first frost, the first snowfall, the amount of rain that summer. Another note told me that he’d piled 25 ¾ cords of wood that fall, from October to November. What I wouldn’t give to ride the tractor with him into the woods one more time and spend the day there cutting wood. We’d bring home a trailer of logs and as Grandpa fed the wood splitter, it was my job to pile it. We made a good team.

Another look around the shop revealed the frugality of a man who grew up during the Great Depression. Coffee cans of nails, washers, screws, and shoelaces were neatly arranged. Planed lumber was neatly labeled in his hand: Butternut, red pine, walnut, birch, oak. I could almost see him sitting on his metal stool, sanding a piece of wood until it shone.

As the memories threatened to overtake me and tears streamed down my face, I stepped outside and to the right. A towering Norway Pine stands sentinel there, planted by my own small hands when I was 7 years old. I was so proud to bring it home from a Girl Scout Jamboree I attended. The tree is enormous now, one of the last remnants of what the yard once was. Bittersweet vines used to grow along the shop wall next to it, but they’re long gone. The lean-to where the Alice Chalmers sat is empty; the log chains removed from the walls. The little shed that once housed the John Deere mower is abandoned, long rusted from disuse.

I headed to the barn next, where the beef cattle and barn cats once lived. The old pump with the orange handle stood in the corner and I smiled as I thought of how the kitties used to swarm around my feet, purring and rubbing my legs hoping for at treat. I learned how to muck stalls in that barn and jumped from dusty hay bales with my cousins. I used to scare my friends with fat barn spiders hanging in the windows and pick tiger lily bouquets from the patch out front. It was my second home.

As I looked around, I knew this was the final goodbye. A new person will own it and I pray she will love it as much as we did. May the yard and fields come alive again, with renewed vigor and purpose. The little farm on Saddle Club Road will always be in my heart.