Banana Bread
she had moved with her family to a home of their at age 13
rather, to a hole in the ground with a floor on the bottom and surrounding four walls
poured cement and concrete block,
an eye beam she had helped her father place,
using a complicated set of levers, a ratchet and pulley her father designed
to maneuver it into position
supported lengthwise on the block and two steel poles running lengthwise
the subfloor above, sheltered by the roof, all else in frame
it took another 7 years to complete.
when as a child, i first went exploring,
the upstairs off the main floor was still open where the subfloor ended, just before the eves
”mind the insulation!” someone shouted upstairs, “stay out of it, you’ll fall through'“
i was all of 4?
i loved exploring all of it, inside and out
the garage smelled of machinery,
the yard was huge, an island of mowed grass among fields of corn and alfalfa and oats
a country road running past it, barns and farmhouses north, the river west a horizon of fields east
lines of trees standing sentry, forming a dividing grid, one family’s farms from another’s
i remember the kittens milling about, the hissing geese, the barn swallows,
the grackles flying in and out back in their “motel” bird house, the bees
king, the great big dog i was supposed to fear, the gentle giant i loved instead
i remember the grass changed to field, and the short distance over furrows to the edge of lawn
then the farmhouse’s wide porch, two steps up, a weathered screen door
glass and metal clattering, footsteps, voices murmuring, the intermittent sharp
but not unkind word or two of phrase
and then the murmuring resumed …
smells, all kinds, peaches and apples, bread and pie, meat and vegetable
wild duck and pheasant for dinner
stuffing with gooseberries and currents, giblets simmered in celery and onion
mincemeat pie, freshly churned butter from heavy cream delivered that day
milk full and thick and creamy
such density and richness more than resolved its scarcity
the scalding and plucking down in house
each of us children received a feather or 2, still then oblivious of any connection
between such treasure, the pride of the person who gave them to us
and such delicious repaste, the warning to mind any gunshot regardless!
Years passed, and the house with the peach trees gained new inhabitants,
At first I played there still, with my cousins, acting out all sorts of stories among the trees
playing hide and seek with the sun
and then,
dancing with the leaves as they fell in autumn winds
and then
tasting the snow as it teased us in late October, then burrowing in it when it fell for real
and then
when the crocuses came up, we skated on the last of the ice on the river
down the old highway by several fields and a couple over
where my aunt and uncle lived before they had children
and then
feeling the earth warm in march, letting the wind bluster me
as the the rains came, and the sun and the daffodils broke through
and then, for reasons not explained my aunt and uncle moved to the upstairs of the house
where my mother lived before becoming my mother
I watched as grandfather built out the rest of the place in preparation,
Putting down the flooring and turning storage space into rooms—bedrooms, a bathroom and kitchen
The places where I couldn’t walk before were turned into the new storage place,
which I, adventurer extraordinaire, quickly turned into secret rooms of mystery!
oblivious to the reality of closed factories, contracted budgets,
changed economies,
rending apart already imperiled lives
My cousins scattered to placed i could not follow and did not understand
and it was discouraged i play near the house with the peach trees ….
although i skulked under their branches for awhile
We still colored eggs but there were far fewer of us to look for them,
and the area we searched was smaller
dinner was still lovely, but ham from the butcher
pineapples from a can
idaho potatoes instead of stuffing,
no currents or gooseberries
milk, thin, in plastic bottles from the grocery
There were no feathers to share, and no peaches for pie, but
Somehow, somewhere, mom found heavy cream, and an old small churn
it may have been her grandmother’s, or an aunt’s
We churned butter, and she pressed it into lamb molds
She taught me to pry the metal shells off when the butter was solid, and
Together, we smoothed the seams.
She gave them to the families of people she loved.
Today my husband makes me banana bread, thick and fresh and lovely.
He brings me a piece warm from the oven, butter melting in
and he tells me of his day while two cats doze,
one on my chair, the other behind my computer.
After cataclysm, I am home.
