Little Lewiston

One of the pleasures of our new old home is the yard. My grampa was a genius in the yard and you could be sure to find him outside working during any warm day if you dropped by. Then around 3:00 he would leave his dirty tennies on the deck and come in to shower downstairs. The yard is a largish lot and in his days of care-taking, it was breath-taking. Or maybe just we who loved it found it so. It was never a fussy yard. In fact, the front yard has always been trim and neat and honestly, nondescript. The back was lush and green. Never formal but somehow extravagant-feeling anyway. Hedges ran down every fence offering a buffer to the neighboring yards without appearing to be there for privacy's sake. A tree next to the deck not only blocked the yard next door but was such a pretty sight you didn't really think that there were stranger's just feet beyond it. On the far side of the yard, more hedges ran the length but they were trimmed casually. They appeared to have simply grown up in their places with soft limbs hanging low but never growing wild. Perennial bulbs were placed here and there (note my ongoing photo gallery of Grampa's Mystery Buds) along the back hedge without a specific plan. Again, they seemed to have simply sprouted from where God might have placed them, rolling them from his fingertips as he walked by one evening.
Large trees from which a wooden swing hung when we were small. The cement rooster and chick from The Farm's yard pulled out every Spring and put unceremoniously under the tree nearest the garage where you'd always notice it when you pulled in but never really paid attention to it. From those tree branches also hung a number of bird feeders filled daily with seed and in the distance, a bird house high on a pole where nests were built and babies squeaked every spring.
Around the deck would hang heavy glorious baskets of flowers. Usually petunias in every vibrant color and no particular plan except to serve as a banner around us while we sat on the deck as my Grampa drank ice water and rested from his work.
It was an easy-seeming yard although it grew from the constant attention of my Grampa. It seems he just loved the labor of it and the result reflected the man that he was, a farm boy. Unsophisticated and easily amused with silly jokes. Informal and perfectionist all in one. The yard just reflected him. Unplanned it seemed and yet a prettier yard I've yet to find.
Now it is our turn to care for this yard. After he passed, lawn companies took over the work for my gramma. She liked simplicity and clean lines. And so the unruly hedges were removed because their maintenance was too much if they were to be kept to her high standards. The baskets of flowers around the deck never appeared again after the summer my Grampa passed. The tree next to the deck is no longer there and I can't remember when it came down. The landscapers didn't clear out around the hedges to look for the willy-nilly perennials and so they didn't bloom out in the open. I imagine that only a few of us understand the magic of this yard and what it was meant to be. I understand the intentional unintentionally lush green of it and how it somehow smelled like The Farm and how the same breezes have blown for forty years over my life from there to here. The cool sweet air surrounded me then and hovers at the edges of the chain link fence waiting to swirl around me again. I feel the yard waiting to wake up to play again like it did with my Grampa.
I've never been a yard person and the Mr. is even less of one. And despite his love for my Grampa and for me, he cannot understand what the breeze and the trees are hoping to be again. Only a very few of us understand that this is a sacred place. So I tell him what needs doing as I quiet myself and listen for what I used to know. And I walk around the edges as my Gramma did looking at every corner and understanding every leaf. And I work in the sunshine trying to recreate details that looked accidental when my Grampa's hands were at work. And I take my shoes off on the deck at around 3:00 and come inside to shower and have dinner.
And it is working. Those very few of us who understand see the color of the grass and the willy-nilly perennials and feel the breeze begin to laugh and dance again. We know that Grampa's yard is waking up. It reaches up to cradle us and soothe us. It draws us all, I think, my sister and my parents and my cousins who walked on the cool grass while my grampa sat in old iron lawn chairs admiring the trees. We want to be here when the temperatures start to climb and we are drawn to baskets of petunias. I see my father sitting on the deck with a cup of coffee and feel his spirit breathing deep. I see my mom watching quietly from a lawn chair as another generation runs on the lawn. I see my sister as she looks at the sturdy beams of the deck and remembers my grampa's hands hard at work building it.
It is our Israel and our Eden. It is our homeland and our inheritance. Not just bricks and mortar and an address. Deep and nourishing to the few of us who understand, my Grampa's yard is coming back to life and teaching us all again to live.

"Little Lewiston" refers to what we've nicknamed the yard. My parent's cottage is in Lewiston and it symbolizes "The Farm" of my children's boyhood. It is the ultimate honor to have them equate this place with Lewiston and speaks of four generations breathing in the goodness of the land. Jay, being a man of letters, has also referred to this placed as C.S. Lewiston.