MEMORIES

©2005 by Geraldine Ahrens

As her knurled fingers gently caressed the cracked handle of the saw, the essence of the hot summer days pervaded her being and she was transported back to that youthful time of life, when old age and crippling arthritis were not on her horizon.

Grandpa Campbell was an old man by the time she was old enough to remember his laughter and sternness, but even now, at the sundown of her years, she could still smell the wood and hear Grandpa’s chanting voice, as he sang the tales of Scotland.

A lifelong romance had gently come of age with her pulling one side of the saw and Happenstance Logan pulling on the other side. She laughed quietly at the memory of getting caught admiring Hap’s physique as they worked together. She had been unable to face him for three days. When they married, they used the saw to build their home.

Hap believed in hard work to remove excess energy from rowdy children and the saw became a symbol of punishment for their three children, Elsa, John and Ethan.

The saw slowly cut its way through many years of trees, fueling the fires that kept them warm during the cold Maine winters.

When Hap went to war, her tears would sprinkle the handle as she would sing the songs of her Grandpa Campbell, or tell whichever child of hers that had the unfortunate task of helping cut firewood, tales of times gone by.

Grandpa Campbell had immigrated to Canada from Scotland when he was a young man and was one of the few survivors of the ill-fated Montreal, which burned to the waterline on the St. Lawrence River, in 1857. He had managed to bring the saw all the way from home and it was all he had left when he came ashore.

When Hap came home from the war, he decided to do the one thing he had dreamed of, raise horses. Harness racing horses in particular. The saw cut the wood for the horse barn and Hap made a special hanger for it, above the inside of the main door.

It has hung there all these years, and now it was time for the old woman to leave. Hap had been gone too many seasons and the place had become overgrown with small trees and weeds. Part of the barn roof had caved in, this past winter, when the weight of eight feet of snow had finally broken the heavy logs that held it in place.

The young man and woman who stood before her were buying the physical part of her memories, for her children and grandchildren had no interest in living in the cold, dark woods of northern Maine.

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And she felt no remorse in making the young man and woman listen to the tales of the saw or of her time of living there, for that was part of the purchase price. When the young woman wiped away a tear, the old woman smiled warmly.

She wasn’t too sad about leaving. Her life had been here, now it would be with her son Ethan and Holly, his wife. They understood the memories of the saw, for their lifelong romance had budded as they cut wood one day, after getting caught stealing pumpkins from the neighbor’s garden.

THE END