The Discovery

She asked me twice what I wanted for dinner; which, in Vermont, really meant lunch.

“Anything is fine, Grandma.” I thought I was safe saying that, but didn’t know for sure since I had not spent much time with this woman.

Parents play a cruel trick on their children when they choose to live on the opposite coast.

My father had told me about the apple pies she used to bake on the farm; how he and his father would cut one down the middle and each eat half.

“I don’t bake anymore,” she was saying, the sound of her voice more like a bird chirping. “It’s a lot of bother and no one eats pies. You know how your cousins are.”

“Yes.” I knew very little about my cousins.

“Your father was such a sweet boy. I still remember the day he asked me to sign that paper…” She found a saucepan and turned her back to me.

“Which paper? To join the Air Force?” If I’d learned anything on this visit it was that I knew no more about my father than I did about his family.

“Well, he was only 17, you see. They wouldn’t let him enlist unless we… I didn’t want him to go, but your father was determined.”

“So you signed it.”

“Your grandfather did.” Her shoulders drooped a little. “I think we can just have ham with this, don’t you?”

“And so he left the farm?” I imagined a dark-haired teenager in worn and dusty clothing, a form in his hand, appealing to parents who grew more and more silent in their grief and confusion.

“We’ll let this simmer for a while. Did I show you the shawl your father sent me from Guam? He went to Guam first, then Paris, where he met your mother. We offered the farm to your uncle, but he didn’t want it either. I don’t know how many people have owned it now.”

I held a frayed photograph of my grandparents. Herbert and Beatrice, standing a bit stiffly in front of the old barn where they kept their dairy cows and where they held dances on Saturday nights.

The dances, I’d been told, were famous in three counties; three counties that probably held fewer people than my neighborhood in California.

“You have to take me there, Grandma.”

She looked up from smoothing the shawl from Guam. “Oh my, three families live out there now in some sort of commune. I haven’t been there for years.”

I pressed. “I’d love to see it.”

The next day, she took me to the cemetery. She and my aunt rode in the front seat of the car, discussing their last trip to the hairdresser.

I wanted to hear more about the dances. And I wanted to learn more about my father, who I’d lived with for almost 20 years. Maybe these women could tell me what lay beneath his taciturn manner.

Rain finally fell and eased the tension between earth and sky. I wandered from one grave to another as my grandmother and aunt scurried back to the car with their purses perched above their newly coiffed hair.

I'd learned that my grandfather Herbert had 13 siblings. Some of them lay interred all around me and some still lived, though I had never met any of them. How many people were there on my father’s side?

How was I part of something so established and expansive and didn’t know it?

Reluctantly, I turned to go. They might think it odd if I continued to walk around in the rain.

I stepped gingerly over my deceased relatives and got back in the car.

“How far are we from the farm, Grandma?” Grand-ma, I practiced silently.

She glanced at my aunt. “It’s really not worth the trip, dear.”

“Please. I’ve heard so much about the dances.”

She chuckled for the first time, and my aunt sighed. After a few minutes, my aunt turned down a dirt road and followed it for a mile or so. We passed what looked like a dilapidated cabin.

“Your father went to school in that building until he was eight.”

My father had told me long before that when he was a boy, he walked from the farm to the school. I had laughed, at the time, and asked if he walked uphill in six feet of snow, both ways, barefoot.

He said never barefoot.

The night before, my uncle told me stories about the dances. He said dozens of people came every Saturday night and paid a dollar to join the party on the upper level of the barn.

A live band played square dance music until midnight, and my grandmother sold hot dogs and cider.

My uncle told me that the dances paid the mortgage when the crops failed or the cows went dry.

My grandmother was speaking. “They added on to the house, these commune people. It won’t look the same.”

The house was different and inhabited by strangers.

I sighed. Thunder rumbled in the distance as we approached the house. I was out of the car before my aunt came to a complete stop.

As I rang the doorbell, my grandmother called to me not to disturb the owners. The door opened to reveal an older man and a St. Bernard dog that greeted me with great enthusiasm. I explained that my father grew up in the house and asked if I could look around.

He smiled. “Of course, come in.”

As he took me from room to room, he explained that the whole house had been renovated, rooms were added, the attic was changed…

My grandmother and aunt waited in the car.

“What about the dances?” I turned because he was chuckling.

“Oh, those dances were famous around here! The dance floor over the barn is beautiful. It hasn’t been touched since the last shindig, except for sweeping. It’s something to see.”

“Will you show me?”

He gestured that I should follow him.

The sun broke through the clouds as we crossed a damp, weed-choked field and entered an old barn that had seen better days. Stalls lined the walls and moldy hay littered the floor.

And it smelled like an old barn. I fought the urge to cover my nose and then noticed the ladder.

“I’ll be in the house,” my host spoke. “Take your time. Have a look around.”

Gingerly, I made my way to the ladder and looked up. I wondered if it would hold my weight. My grandmother and aunt were probably wondering what I was doing.

I put one foot on the bottom rung and started to climb.

At the ceiling, my head bumped a rusty trap door and I pushed it open. Then my eyes were level with a smooth, golden, burnished wood floor. It stretched out in all directions.

I continued up and onto my feet. Windows lined the two long walls on each side and particles of dust swirled and flashed in the sunlight.

The sun’s rays spilled onto the lacquered floor and I could have been walking on glass.

Suddenly the room seemed to vibrate with music and the laughter of those long-ago people. Their feet stomped to the beat as they changed partners and whirled each other around. Plaid shirts and full skirts blended and blurred as the band played.

I could hear the music and feel the excitement of people taking a break from hard work.

And I caught a glimpse of a younger version of my father; a glimpse of a kid who was not yet my father.

I recognized the face because it was my face too.

The commune man’s head appeared at the trap door. “We’re thinking of holding a dance here this summer. It’s a shame not to use this space.”

I smiled. “I think you should.”

“Sorry, but one of the ladies in the car said they’re ready to go.”

I nodded and walked toward him, stepping on rays of light, like a child.

My father wasn’t one, introverted man; he was part of a large, extended family and a complex community.

And I wasn’t just a visitor. I was the granddaughter of the original owners of this farm; of the people who hosted dances that were famous in three counties.

I stepped down onto the ladder and slowly closed the trap door over my head.

Grandma was waiting for me.