My Secret Place

Memory of a childhood during the magic of the Christmas season.

Barbara Hibgie is strumming Coventry Carol on her harp and I am carried away in time…

It is the autumn of 1969 and the leaves have turned and fallen under the cold wind blown from the heavens above. I bundle up in my brown suede leather coat lined in lambs wool, pull on my boots. The icy air meets my warm breath, its vapor rising swiftly above my head. I breathe, deeply and take in all the scents – the burning pine, hickory and poplar wood. The smell of freshly brewed coffee coming through an old screened-in porch next door. I want to go for a walk in my Secret Place.

 

 

 

 

 

My Secret Place is a grove of fruit trees that tunneled between my house and the house next to us. Hedgerows separate the main estate from the servant's quarters. The area is very overgrown and I am in a tiny glen in the midst of a thick forest. I pick the locust shells from the bark of the trees and collect them in an old cigar box of my grandfather's. I hunt for the little dragon toads that burrow in the bare ground. I quickly grab one as it tries to escape what it senses as grave danger and gently cradle him in the palm of my hand, stroking its soft belly, then tenderly release him back into his little world.

 

The old house next door is a two-story, built of stone at the turn of the 20th century by a famous federal judge before Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907. This area was once part of the wild, Wild West. It was a stately old house in its day, complete with an old Steinway grand piano and a parlor off to the side to entertain people of great importance.

It is Christmas and their family has gathered at this old family home, after a year of abandon, and the place, once again, has come to life.

 

The elderly grandmother was once a very accomplished pianist, the others possess a certain genius of artistic creativity. Charles, her son is a large man who wears a distinguishing beard and mustache. I think he is a professor at a university somewhere far from my hometown. Charles and the boys layout the train sets complete with mountainous landscape. The living area is transformed into a miniature community. I am invited to come over and watch the train travel through the mountainous hillsides and tunnels and through the little junctions where passengers awaited to board in their Victorian-era attire. Looking upon this world that I cannot be a part of, only a spectator, for the world is only a small figment of the imagination of large men. I am only a privileged visitor in its short-lived existence.

 

The phone is ringing and suddenly it is 2007. Back to reality, back to work. The mind is a wondrous thing. It's power to transport me through boundless space and time to a most cherished and enchanting place…

For a moment, time stood still.

LavenderLassie 12-2007