This Old Place
Dez was still sleeping, Cook hadn’t come in yet and Emelina was restless. Her husband wouldn’t be off shift for another five days. Dez had come to the Estate to spend time with her sister. They had both been busy with other things and hadn’t seen each other for maybe only a week, but it seemed a lot longer. Dez was looking for a small part-time job in the city, only to last for a month or so until the orchard needed more of her attention. Emelina had been doing ………she stopped. What had she been doing? She’d had meetings with the hospital charity board one or two times, she’d been to the bank a few times for Digby……there must had been more. Whispering to herself she said “I’ll just go for a walk and let Dez sleep.” Still early but warming up already, she slipped a light jacket on and tiptoed to the front door. Putting her hiking boots on, she quietly opened the door, closed it softly behind her and turned to go for a walk. A rooster’s crow echoed across the estate. The sky was clear and all around her was wet from the night’s rain. Zipping up her jacket, she shivered. “Not warm enough yet. I need to get walking.”
Taking the gravelled path from the house that led down to the walking track, she set out walking then broke into a slow jog. Once on the track she slowed her pace, stopped and listened to the birds as they fluttered about the trees. She was warned away by a bird or two if they thought she was getting too close to a nest. Her shoulders relaxed and she turned her face to the sky. Whatever busyness there had been slid off of her shoulders and fell among the new grass by the track.
When she got to the far end of the track she stopped and leaned against the big old tree covered in moss. Looking back at her home, looking around at the expansive yard and glancing to the side at the garden and orchard, she felt small. Too small to take advantage of all that belonged to her. It wasn’t the first time she had felt this nudge to do something with all of this space, this potential. She’d had a plan - rather an idea - that the estate house could be used for extra beds in the pandemic, then it was something else, and something else. None of it coming to fruition. She wanted the garden to be shared with the community. That didn’t happen.
The only thing that had really happened was that she had her sister back. Her sister was taking care of the orchard. She had developed an apiary that was struggling because they were both still learning about keeping bees. She stood away from the tree, patted it and looked up into its branches. “So, what do you think? You’ve been here longer than any of us on this old place.” Cocking her head, she listened for an answer. Only a little squirrel peered curiously down from above, birds twittered and a fog horn sounded from a distant strait. Sighing, she said good-bye to the tree, the squirrel and the birds. The sound of the fog horn lingered. No longer restless, she had not really solved any of the past or developed plans for the future. She only knew that her heart was at ease. Today would just be a day of rest.
“Whether we like it or not, we all come from someplace. And at
some point in our lives, we have to make peace with that place.”
~ Jeffery Stepakoff, The Orchard
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