a tree worth hugging...

"I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree."* Yes, it's true. I'm a tree hugger. I've always felt a deep affinity for anything with branches. But there's a special place in my heart reserved for one particular spruce – the heroic tree that saved my family's home.

It was a sticky-hot afternoon in the summer of 1985. My three young sons and I were picking peas in our farm garden when a fierce and unexpected storm blew in across the fields. We ran for the house with rain pelting our backs. Wind ripped the door from my hands as we struggled to get inside, and then slammed the door behind us with an angry gust. We stood gasping and dripping in the middle of the room as the storm raged around us, rattling windows and battering the shingles until our little house trembled like leaves on an aspen. When the first flash of lightning split the suddenly dark sky, the answering boom of thunder seemed ominously close.

Photo by Brandon Morgan via Unsplash

The kids were frightened and so was I – I've never liked thunderstorms and this one was a doozie. But I pasted on what I hoped was a brave face, gathered them close, and told them not to worry, we would keep each other safe. I had barely formed the words when a flash of dazzling blue light and a massive BANG-crack assaulted our senses. The air around us seemed to sizzle, our ears popped, and the hairs on our arms prickled to attention. In one surreal moment, the plastic thermostat casing flew off the wall and struck my eldest son in the forehead. A trickle of blood leaked from his wound as we stood there, trembling and holding each other tight. A final gust of wind rattled the windows and the storm roared away as quickly as it had arrived.

After a quick head check and a Band-Aid for number one son, the four of us ventured outside. Instead of the usual after-storm freshness, the sharp tang of burnt wood filled the air. Lightning had found the highest point on the farm: one of three mature spruce trees in the yard. That poor tree was split from top to bottom. Wisps of smoke rose from the jagged scar and charred wood chips littered the lawn. Electricity had run to ground through the tree's roots, jumped to the plumbing that crossed the yard from well to house, burned out the water pump in the basement, and then surged through the electrical system to launch the freaky flying thermostat.

We'd had a close call. I'll always be grateful to that majestic spruce for taking the hit, because the second highest point on the farm – mere feet away from the tree – was the chimney on the roof of our beautiful little house.

Harrington House in Box Grove, Ontario circa 1990
Painting by Jorge Nascimento

I don't have a photo of my heroic spruce to share but I hope you'll enjoy this slideshow of other trees I've loved. Click on the player to start/advance the show.

 

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*Poem fragment from Trees by Joyce Kilmer.

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stillpoint is the blog of Canadian author Cheryl Cooke Harrington

  

chicken lessons...

It's not a proper homestead until the hens come home to roost. So, having survived our first winter on the farm, the spring of 1976 found us building ourselves a sturdy chicken coop.

Compared to the splendid backyard coops showcased in Country Living, ours might be kindly described as "rustic", but I always thought it a pleasant, welcoming place. Three multi-paned windows formed the south wall, above a hen-sized hatch and ramp. The west and north faces sported whitewashed board and batten siding, the east a human access door. The roof was steeply pitched, nattily shingled in a mostly-green patchwork. Doors, windows, and shingles were leftover odds and ends salvaged by hubby and my roofer brother-in-law. We learned to be frugal recyclers back in our days on the farm.

Inside the coop, six spacious, straw-filled nest boxes and a series of sleeping roosts spanned the back wall, with food and water stations opposite, on either side of the hatch. I remember standing in the newly-built coop for the first time, warm sunshine streaming through the windows, fresh straw rustling beneath my feet. A good place to be a chicken, I thought, and imagined easing my hand under a warm, contented hen to retrieve a fresh egg for breakfast. The only thing missing was a flock.

A Saturday morning trip to the local Farmer's Market solved that problem. In the bustling livestock area, we spotted a huddle of six red hens, retired working ladies who, according to the seller, still had plenty of good egg producing days ahead. With trimmed beaks and clipped wings, they certainly weren't the prettiest birds on the block but we liked them – and goodness knows they deserved a better life. We took them home. Upon seeing their new digs for the first time, our six ladies stood wide-eyed and open beaked for one surprised moment and then lunged, squabbling and clucking, for the food tray.

Lesson #1: Chickens have absolutely no manners and very tiny brains.

Instead of roosting on the thoughtfully provided perches, two of our six hens preferred to sleep in their nest boxes. Come morning, instead of choosing empty boxes with fresh, clean straw in which to lay their eggs, the rest of the ladies decided the occupied nests must be best and so they piled on. It's a wonder the eggs didn't wind up pre-scrambled.

Lesson #2: Easing your hand under a pile of warm, contented hens results in a wickedly pecked hand, three mightily disgruntled hens, and a couple of lovely brown eggs smudged with evidence of the previous night's chicken poop, thank you very much.

One of our girls was a rebel. We called her Ludlow. At first, she made a habit of dropping her egg-of-the-day wherever she happened to be standing at the time – usually on the bare floor in a corner of the coop, but sometimes out in the spacious fenced yard, well hidden from hungry humans. ("Cluck-cluck-cluck" sounds suspiciously like laughter when you're bent over, peering under burdock leaves.)

Within a month, though, hens and humans settled into a comfortable routine. Eggs were almost always deposited where we could easily find and collect them. And, oh, those eggs! The flavourful, bright orange yolks and firm whites were as different from pale, bland, watery supermarket eggs as our happy free range hens were different from their sad, battery-raised sisters. Some of our ladies regularly gifted us with giant double-yolkers. What bounty! We couldn't possibly eat all the eggs they produced, but neighbours were eager to buy whatever we couldn't use. Opportunity knocked. It was time to grow the flock.

We ordered two dozen baby chicks from the local farmer's co-op, half Leghorn and half Barred Rock. The day-old chicks were delivered in a big cardboard carton and when the lid came off – talk about cute! J and his brothers were beyond thrilled with our box of fluffy peepers. The chicks spent their first weeks of life confined to a comfy cage in our sunroom, eating, sleeping, peeping…pooping.

Lesson #3: Baby chicks may be the cutest things under the sun, but 24 of them together produce a mountain of poop. Also, they grow fast. Very fast.

Lesson #4: Between the fluffy baby chick stage and the handsome young chicken stage comes a gangly stage of ghastly pin-feathered ugliness. Also, just like their elders, chicks have absolutely no manners and very tiny brains.

Our sunroom smelled a whole lot better once the chicks moved outside. Their temporarily fenced-off corner of the coop had a baby-proof water fountain (because, given the opportunity, chicks will fall into their water and drown or be trampled by their siblings), a makeshift automatic feed tray (because chicks are non-stop eating machines), and a heat lamp to keep them all cozy at night.

Lesson #5: Temporary fencing keeps young chicks in but won't keep a fat Ludlow out when she's got her beady eyes locked on all that delicious baby food.

Weeks passed. Chicks ate and peeped and grew…and pooped. The youngsters sprouted sleek, shiny feathers. A few handsome lads grew impressive tail plumes, wickedly sharp ankle spikes, and youthful cocky attitudes. Crowing practice began every morning at dawn and continued throughout the day whenever the guys felt like showing off. Our peaceful chicken yard erupted in frequent rooster fights, sending hens young and old into frenzies of squawks and flaps as the males worked out who would be King of the Coop, the Alpha Rooster.

Lesson #6: Don't tease the rooster!

One of my most vivid memories of those early chicken days is the sight of our landlady's eight-year-old granddaughter, dressed in her prettiest pink Sunday dress with matching ribbons in her hair, running full-tilt down the lane, screaming for her mother. In hot pursuit was Lancelot, our newly crowned Alpha Rooster, puffed up to twice his normal size, looking and sounding like an angry, feathered demon from hell.

Turns out, Darling Girl had decided to have an uninvited snoop around the chicken coop and encountered Lancelot, loose in the yard. Spotting his impressive tail feathers, she decided she'd like to have one for herself. Cue one very angry rooster!

In a classic case of turnabout's fair play, Lance the Rooster was forced to beat a hasty retreat minutes later with an angry Italian grandmother hot on his heels, wielding her broom and cursing his ancestors.

Ah, farm life. Never a dull moment.

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Images are my own work with the exception of Fresh Eggs and Attack Rooster.  

stillpoint is the blog of Canadian author Cheryl Cooke Harrington

   

window cats...

The black and white cat showed up one sunny afternoon, lounging on the front porch of our old farmhouse as if she belonged there. Tail twitching in response to my murmured, "hello, stranger," she eyed me warily as I climbed the steps to unlock the front door. When I turned to introduce myself properly, the cat had vanished.

She turned up again an hour later, nose to the kitchen window, gaze fixed on the chicken I was preparing for the stew pot. She opened her mouth and meowed loudly – a hopeful, "feed me now" plea. It is a wise cat who knows a soft touch when she sees one.

I found an old saucer, filled it with milk, and delivered it to the porch. Poor cat was obviously hungry and fell upon that milk as if she hadn't seen food in days. I sat on the steps and watched her lap-lap-lap until the saucer was clean. She gave her whiskers a quick swipe and sat back on her haunches to study me for a long, thoughtful moment. I spoke softly, inviting her to move closer, asking where she'd come from and if she had a name. The cat blinked and walked away.

She appeared at the window again at dinner time and scored herself a small plate of chicken scraps along with a chorus of can-we-keep-her-pleases from my three young sons. I was tempted. Their Dad took a firm stand in the absolutely not camp, claiming he'd never liked cats and we were all a bit allergic and there was absolutely no way that thing was ever coming inside.

Window cat came back the next day, and the next, quickly abandoning her stand-offish manner in favour of pats and strokes and much admiration from four out of five of the humans in residence – never inside, of course.

A few days later, I might have accidentally added a box of cat chow to my grocery cart. And middle son might have dug out an old curry brush, unused since the death of our much-loved dog the year before. Soon, the kids and I had christened our window cat Cookie – a name reserved for favoured family pets. 

Our window cat had managed to make herself a member of the family in less than a week. She was beginning to look quite plump and healthy, too, her dingy grey coat growing cleaner and glossier by the day, thanks to an entourage of willing brush-wielders. Somehow she'd even forged a truce with hubby. He grudgingly admitted she'd be useful for keeping the mice away from the chicken feed. She could stay, but only as an outside cat. It wasn't long before I noticed him leaving the greenhouse door ajar for her. Nobody likes to stay out in the rain, after all. (We did not speak of this.)

And did I mention that our window cat was looking a bit plump? The reason soon became obvious. Cookie was pregnant. First order of business was a trip to the vet, who pronounced her fit and healthy and sent us home with a vitamin supplement and a strict deadline for a follow-up visit and spay. Cookie was tremendously annoyed by the car ride, shredding her cardboard travel box in protest, but once home again all was forgiven, thanks to a little sweet talk and a generous handful of her favourite treats.

We set up a large wooden box on the side porch and lined it with newspaper, hoping Cookie would think it suitable for a nursery. A smaller, covered box at one end contained clean straw and a comfy old blanket for mama cat's nesting pleasure. She took to it right away. She also took to wearing the collar we gave her, complete with her name and our phone number on a metal tag. The latter caused much grumbling and rolling of eyes on the hubby front. But when Cookie disappeared just before her due date, guess who lead the search party?

Thankfully, Cookie hadn't wandered far. She'd given birth in a nest of dried grass, sheltered by a pile of rubble in a hollow on the far side of the lawn. Heavy rains were forecast and we feared her four tiny kittens would be washed away in the deluge. We needed to move the little family to the shelter of the porch, but in order to do that we'd have to coax Cookie away from her babies. Food was the answer. She'd been gone for three days and was sure to be ravenous. I gave the cat chow box a noisy shake and, sure enough, mama Cookie appeared, trotting eagerly up to the porch. While she ate her fill and lapped up some water, hubby rescued the litter, gently tucking the babies into their nursery box. I confess to holding my breath as I introduced Cookie to this new arrangement, half expecting her to either reject the kittens or stubbornly return them, one-by-one, to her den across the lawn. But she seemed quite pleased with the comfortable arrangement and settled in to enjoy life as a proud and pampered mama.

The kittens thrived. And while they ate and played and grew, (and grew!), I got busy. Four little kittens were soon going to need new homes. I put the word out to family and friends, pestered, cajoled, and described their adorable kitty paws and sweet pink noses until people ran to hide when they saw me coming. But honestly, how could anyone resist these little cuties?

This photo was taken on one of their first explorations beyond the big box. The wee cutie on the far right, sporting a single black dot on her left side, was an enthusiastic climber and extremely fond of my youngest son, J. He'd always been a bit nervous around dogs and cats, preferring to watch from afar but not touch or be touched, so when he named the kitten Dot and welcomed her onto his lap, we were doomed. Dot would stay with us. And not only stay, Dot would become an indoor cat. (Hubby, like the rest of us, would do just about anything for J.)

If you look closely at the far left of the cat family photo, you might spot a tiny black blob with four white paws, neck-deep in the daylilies. Always adventurous, that black kitten went home with Kate, my best friend since childhood. Named Pepper by her new family, she lived a long and happy almost-twenty years as a city cat in west-end Toronto. Here she is, still adventuring as an elder cat.

The two remaining fluff balls eventually found homes, too. One with my niece, the other with a co-worker's mum.

But that's not the end of the story. Not even close.

One evening a week or so after her kittens moved on, Cookie appeared at the window with a friend in tow, a calico cat, grubby and hungry and very, very pregnant. Hubby issued a firm and final pronouncement: "Absolutely not!"

We named her Patches.

The two cats settled into Cookie's big box nursery and together they raised Patches' litter of five. 

Somehow, we found new homes for all those kittens, too. Cookie and Patches both eventually visited the vet to be spayed and vaccinated, and both returned to the farm as carefree lady-cats with plenty of mice to chase and a warm greenhouse where the door was mysteriously always left ajar.

I'd love to end this tale with "happily ever after" but the truth is bittersweet. In 1993, we purchased a home of our own, a move that took us less than half a kilometre down the road from our much loved rented farm on the outskirts of Box Grove to a sturdy heritage home in the village. Unlike the isolated farmhouse, our new home sat close to a busy road. Outdoor cats Cookie and Patches would face danger from traffic there, and we knew they wouldn't willingly abandon the farm they knew as home. Our sweet Italian landlady came to their rescue, admitting she already loved her piccoli tesori (little treasures). It seems they'd been walking up the lane to enjoy second breakfast with her for months. Who knew?

Mama Giuseppina promised the cats would have plenty to eat at her house and said we should visit whenever we liked. Within a month, those two sly felines were sleeping on Mama G's bed, feasting on her table scraps, and toasting their toes by her fire – outdoor cats no more. It makes me happy to think of them that way.

Of course, little Dot moved with us to the new house. We did our best to take the right precautions, confining her first to her crate and then to a single room while we settled in. But somehow, amid the chaos of the move, she escaped. Our first hope was that she'd made a desperate run back to the farm, but there was no sign of her there or anywhere along the road. Weeks passed. Little Dot had vanished without a trace. I wanted to believe she had her mother's good instincts. That she showed up at a window and convinced some kind person to take her in, feed her, and care for her. But I couldn't help fearing the worst.

Months later, I was surprised to see Dot's sweet little face gazing out at me from a window on the far side of the village. At least, it sure looked like our Dot. When I tapped on the door to inquire, the woman who answered was brusque. No, she hadn't found a stray cat. No, her Molly couldn't possibly be our Dot because Molly had been hers "forever." Maybe that was true. Or maybe the woman simply feared I'd try to claim the cat she obviously loved. Whatever the truth, J and I chose to believe the little face in the window really was our Dot, gone from our lives but safe and loved in her forever home.

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stillpoint is the blog of Canadian author Cheryl Cooke Harrington

oh, traitorous nose!

Close your eyes and sniff:

Photo by Marisa DeMeglio | CC-BY-2.0

On second thought, don't close your eyes. Just gaze upon the pretty lilacs and let your olfactory memory go to work.

For many people, the image alone will be enough to trigger a vivid scent memory, a scent likely to conjure thoughts of springtime, sunshine, warm breezes and gentle rain.

I should be so lucky.

Oh, the lilac image does trigger a scent memory for me, no doubt about that. But no sweetly perfumed breezes come to mind. Instead, my traitorous nose conjures a dank and earthy funk.

It all began on a warm spring afternoon in 1986. Friends and family had been invited to the farm for a celebration of my parents' wedding anniversary. After days of intense preparation, the feast was ready. Our little house looked bright and fresh as could be. Even our three rambunctious sons had been scrubbed clean. As party hour drew near, I took a moment alone to admire the table. Set with grandma May's treasured Limoges china and our special occasion crystal glassware, it sparkled, ready for company.

"Mom!" The screen door slammed and middle son bounded into the house looking slightly less scrubbed than I remembered. "Dad wants to know if—"

He fell suddenly silent, his smile fading away and his nose wrinkling. Before I could ask what was wrong, he took a giant step back and said, in a horrified tone, "It smells bad in here, Mom."

As I moved to join him in the hallway, I caught a whiff of it, too. And there was no mistaking that smell. Dead mouse.

Mice are an inescapable fact of country life and, for the most part, we chose to live and let live, as long as the mice chose wisely and stayed outside. Inside, they were rodent non grata and definitely not welcome at our party, dead or alive.

Middle son rounded up his brothers and we organized a search. The odour was strongest in the front hall and near the cellar stairs but despite poking, prodding, and sniffing in every possible nook and cranny we had no luck finding the stinky culprit. Our guests were due to arrive in less than an hour. The smell was growing stronger by the minute. What to do?

The day was warm, with a gentle, steady breeze, so my first step was to open all the windows. That's when middle son remembered what he'd been sent to ask me. "Do you want Dad to cut some lilacs for the house?"

Yes! Our lilac hedge had some of the most aromatic flowers I'd ever encountered. Their sweet, long-lasting fragrance was exactly what we needed to disguise the presence of a not-so-dearly departed mouse. While I pulled out every vase I could find, plus a few big mason jars for good measure, the boys helped their dad cut lilacs. Masses and masses of lilacs. We placed them in the front hallway, beside the cellar door, in the living room and sunroom—even in the bathroom. They looked lovely and, more important, they smelled lovely… like springtime.

The party was a success—great company, good food, happy times. Everyone loved the lilacs. We even sent bunches home with a few people. Only later, with windows closed against the cool evening air, did the scent of mouse begin to insinuate itself again, mingling with the fragrance of cut lilacs until the two smells became one.

Days passed. As the flowers faded, so did their fragrance. The smell of death faded, too, and we never did find the mouse. Its dry bones remain entombed forever inside the walls of that old house.

Liam Moloney | CC-BY-SA-2.0

The following year when the first lovely lilacs burst into bloom in our garden, I was eager to visit them, to bury my face in the pale purple flowers and revel in the scent of springtime. That's when I first discovered the awful olfactory truth. And thirty years later, that truth still applies. For me, the sweet, heady perfume of lilacs will always carry a base note of mouse.

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Mouse image by George Shuklin | CC-BY-SA-1.0

stillpoint is the blog of Canadian author Cheryl Cooke Harrington

when the hand is dust...

On a table beside my bed there's a burled walnut box full of treasures. Not jewels or gold. These treasures are all about family. In fact, the box itself is a treasure. Made for my great-grandmother as a Christmas gift in 1867, it has been passed down from mothers to daughters and, over the years, lovingly filled with little pieces of our history.

Noble Dickenson was my great-grandfather and this is his "Sundries Book". Leather-bound, with a little brass clasp, the book measures just 2 by 3-1/2 inches. Noble carried it with him from 1868 to 1870 as he travelled, worked, and saved for his future.

The earliest entries in the little journal are almost completely illegible now – time has taken its toll on the "indelible" pencil lead. Most of the readable entries are Noble's accounting records, income, expenses, and lists. But there are also moments of observation that bring his world to life. 

On March 29th, 1870, he wrote: "Noticed the first bluebirds of the year today on our way to split up an elm tree we felled in James Will's wood. Joe and I. No robins as yet observed." It must have been a long, cold winter in Norwichville, Ontario.

A month later, another interesting entry: "Notes of our journey to the States, April 22nd, 1870. Left Norwichville on the morning of the 21st. Roads in a [...] state with snow. Got into Woodstock at 1 o'clock same day. Had dinner or supper of carrots and started for Detroit in the night at 1 o'clock. Got into Windsor at 8 in the morning and crossed the river right away on the boat. Staw (sic) in Detroit until evening. Got tics. on the 5 […] for [ ....]  Willy rather cross. I thought vegetation in general was farther advanced than in Canada. From Detroit to G. Haven, from G. Haven to Muskegon, from Muskegon per [...] to Frankfort."

I believe Willy was Noble's brother William … and I'd probably be rather cross, too, if dinner after a long day of travel turned out to be carrots. Just carrots! (That can't be right, but the word sure looks like carrots to me.)

By June 25th of 1870, the brothers had arrived in the thriving metropolis of Muscantine, Iowa.

Muscantine engraving, 1865, Barber and Howe, Public Domain

Noble wrote, "Bought pants at Silvermans, Muscantine" and went on to list his purchases. Apparently I come by my love of shopping honestly – this is quite a list. It's quite a hefty expenditure, too, at a time when his earnings averaged 75 cents a day.

After his five month, 2500 km (1600 mile) journey, Great grandpa Noble Dickenson returned to Norwichville (now known as Norwich), Ontario where he served the town as Post Master until October of 1886. He married great grandma Margaret Gainfort on March 5th, 1871 and together they raised a family of nine – three boys and six girls. According to family lore, Noble and Margaret first met via telegraph, making theirs one of the world's first "online" romances.

I'm smitten. The ancestry bug has bitten and I'm feeling the pull to discover more secrets from the past. There are plenty of clues and starting places hiding in the little treasure box beside my bed, so stay tuned for more. (And, yes, I am writing a story about Noble and Margaret's telegraph romance. How could I possibly resist?)

What have you discovered about your family history?

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Wondering where you've heard that before? The title of this post is a quote from My Autograph by Susanna Moodie (1803-1885):

"What—write my name!
            How vain the feeble trust,
            To be remembered
      When the hand is dust—"

stillpoint is the blog of Canadian author Cheryl Cooke Harrington

  

easy wind and downy flake...

Toronto hasn't seen much snow this winter – yet. But the monster blizzard that battered the east coast this past weekend has me reminiscing about past winters and life in simpler times.

Not that there was ever anything "simple" about enduring massive snowfalls, ice storms, and power outages. But I can't help wondering if our always-connected, always turned on twenty-first century life means we have a harder time coping when the inevitable happens. And then I wonder . . . what if the grid goes down and stays down? Zombie apocalypse, anyone?

Back in my hippy-back-to-the-land days of the 1970s and 80s, my husband and I and our three young sons lived in a rented farm house with several acres of land and a ramshackle barn. We moved to our farm on a snowy day at the end of December in 1975. I'll never forget arriving there with our overloaded camper van, and several carloads of city-folk friends to find the long gravel driveway completely drifted in. Hubby made a run at it with the van and, by some miracle, managed to stay on the track. After a few more runs, he'd cleared enough of a path for the rest of the convoy to follow. Our friends unloaded their vehicles in record fast time and beat a hasty retreat to the city, no doubt convinced we'd lost our minds. There were times, during that first challenging winter, when I wondered if they might be right.

A cranky old octopus of an oil furnace lurked in the cellar where it struggled to deliver heat to the first floor. Upstairs bedrooms were always cold but we piled on extra blankets and told ourselves the bracingly fresh air that gusted through our ancient sash windows made for healthy sleeping. (In fact, it probably saved our lives. I'm sure that furnace was pumping out clouds of carbon monoxide along with its meagre heat.)

We installed a massive cast-iron stove before our second winter on the farm, partly for the ambiance of a wood fire but mostly because we weren't sure the old furnace would see us through another season. We were right about that. For the next sixteen years, we relied on a Fisher stove like this one to keep us warm – hard work, sometimes, but worth it.

In late summer, a truck would deliver seven bush cords of wood, dumping it unceremoniously at the end of the driveway. We (and by "we" I mean mostly hubby) became skilled at splitting logs into manageable chunks, obsessive about hunting down kindling – fallen cedar branches from the neighbour's woodlot were best – and expert at stacking the split cords in neat, shoulder-high rows to dry. Our sons still grumble about the brutal Two Load Rule: each boy had to carry two big armloads of firewood into the house before settling down to their after school snacks. The rule applied equally to me and their Dad, of course, but the child labour angle makes for better stories, all of them starting, "Why, when I was a boy . . ." The care and feeding of that wood stove became the stuff of family legends.

First person up on a winter's morning (again, almost always hubby) would hustle down to poke the embers and get a fire going to warm things up for the rest of us. The kids would huddle around the stove while they waited for breakfast. Unfortunately, eldest son had a habit of presenting his backside to the stove. There were a few times he got a bit too close. We teased him that we didn't need marks on the wall to tell us how much he'd grown in a year, we could just check the red stripes on his behind.

One particularly cold morning, with the boys off to school and the main floor feeling toasty warm, I decided to treat myself to a hot, relaxing bath. We always kept the plug in the bathroom drain because the tap had an intermittent drip and the drain had a habit of freezing. Sure enough, that morning there was a shallow puddle trapped in the tub. When I reached for the plug to release the water, my fingers skated across a solid sheet of ice. I changed my mind about the bath.

The following summer, with our landlord's blessing, we knocked that old tub room off the back of the house and built a new, well-insulated bathroom and a lovely big sun room in its place. Not only was that sun room the best reading spot I've ever had, it was perfect for starting seedlings in the spring and made a glorious heat trap on sunny winter days.

It's possible I'm seeing those long ago winters through the rose coloured glasses of fond memory, but I'm positive snow was deeper – and fell more often – in those early days on the farm. Corn stubble in the surrounding fields disappeared under a blanket of white in November and wasn't seen again until April. We could step out the back door, strap on our cross country skis, and take off for a trek through the woods. The kids loved the adventure of it, learning how to start a fire in the snow and savouring a picnic lunch in the wild.

These days, we're all city dwellers, but a recently acquired plot of land has us dreaming and scheming. Far from the city lights and off the grid, the property has fertile fields, a scrap of forest, and a tiny cold water lake. We're in no rush to give full time back-to-the-landing another try; we like our internet and city comforts a bit too much. But I have to admit, there's also comfort in knowing we've done it before and, if we need to, we know how to do it again. Hopefully without zombies.

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Wondering where you've heard that before? The title of this post is a quote from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost:

"The only other sound’s the sweep

of easy wind and downy flake."

stillpoint is the blog of Canadian author Cheryl Cooke Harrington

  

The White Lady of Box Grove, a true ghost story

Sunday, December 15, 1975

"Mommy?"

Adam's voice came in a tight whisper, an instant response to the squeak of floorboards as I climbed the stairs. It was our second night in the old rented farmhouse and my not-quite-three-year-old son was restless in unfamiliar surroundings.

"Coming," I whispered back, hoping we wouldn't rouse his baby brother.

Adam looked up, eyes full of worry, as I bent to tuck in his covers. "Sing me a song?"

"Sure. Just one, though. It's my bedtime, too." I settled on the edge of his bed and gave him a quiet rendition of his favourite, You Are My Sunshine.  "Okay, now?"

"I guess." He didn't sound too sure about the state of his okay-ness, so I sat for a moment longer, my hand resting gently on his arm.

"Where'd that lady go?"

"What lady, hon?" This was a puzzler. We hadn't seen a soul all day. Not since late the night before, when the friends recruited to help with our move from Toronto dropped off the last boxes.

"The white lady." Adam pointed across the room. "She was there."

A chill spidered its way up my spine as I turned to follow his sleepy gaze. In the corner of the room, three-month-old Matthew nestled peacefully in his crib, sound asleep.  No lady. I let go of the breath I'd been holding and turned back to Adam. "When was this, sweetie?"

"I woke up," he said, sounding peevish now. "She was looking at Matty again. I said hi and she did this," Adam lifted one finger to his lips in a shushing gesture. "Then I heard you. And then I looked and she was gone. Is she your friend?"

I stroked his hair, hoping he wouldn't notice the trembling of my hand. "I think you must've been dreaming." I certainly hoped he'd been dreaming. Thoughts of other, more ghostly, explanations for a strange lady in white seemed to swarm and scuttle through my mind.

"No," said Adam. "I told you. I woke up. She came last night, too, but you were asleep."

Gooseflesh prickled up my arms. Across the room, baby Matthew grumbled and stretched. "Well," I said, trying to sound a lot braver than I felt, "she's not here now."

"Did she go home?" he wondered, scanning the room once more.

"Home to bed," I whispered. And hoped with every fibre of my being it was the truth.

"Good," he said. "She was tired." And with that astounding statement, Adam's eyes drifted shut.

I didn't sleep at all that night. After relating the whole, spooky story to my husband, I'd insisted the two of us make a top-to-bottom search of the house. Our dog trailed along from room to room, looking baffled and sleepy but only raising her hackles once, when a mouse peeked out from beneath the fridge. No unseen, unearthly presence. No odd feelings. No lady in white.

Adam never mentioned the lady again. Whenever his Dad or I tried to bring the subject up, he acted as if he'd forgotten all about it. Winter turned to spring and we settled into life in the sleepy Ontario hamlet of Box Grove, enjoying our drafty but definitely not haunted country home.

Months later, my husband paid a visit to a neighbouring farm in search of nesting straw for our chickens. He returned looking a bit unsettled. After some coaxing, he related this conversation with the old farmer.

"Everything okay over at your place, then? Nothing… strange?"

Strange? At first, hubby thought the farmer meant the strange kind of science involved in hen husbandry or septic tank maintenance. But, no.

"They say it's haunted, that place of yours. Last folks didn't stay long. But now you're there, fixing things up… well, maybe things have changed. Maybe the White Lady likes you."

Cue goosebumps.

I like to think the White Lady did like us. Hadn't Adam said his lady was tired? Perhaps knowing the old homestead was loved and cared for once again gave her peace. Perhaps, with us, the White Lady of Box Grove finally found her rest.

True story. Happy Halloween!

Permalink: The White Lady of Box Grove

Update: This story was published in the 2015 Halloween edition of the Markham Economist & Sun newspaper.

stillpoint is the blog of Canadian author Cheryl Cooke Harrington