To the Waters and the Wild
When my parents bought this farm, they were looking for a place to raise a family. The two hard-working, level-headed people that I remember them as realized that the streets of their city, that their small one-bedroom apartment, wasn’t a place to rear children. Alicia was on the way at the time, and the story goes that Dad worked nearly 80 hours a week throughout the pregnancy to get them out of what they would label a “hell hole”.
Mom always told us, I remember, that they when they found the farm, when they realized it was the perfect fit, that it was feasible and where they could envision themselves, she said it seemed like a fairytale. Like they were closing in on their “happily ever after”. And for the most part, it was.
For them.
My earliest memory of the old man is blurry, and with age I’ve lost some of the finer details. I just remember that it was a frigid day in November and that he walked the property for nearly four hours, which to the mind of a five year old is an eternity.
It’s not that it was the first time that I had seen the old man, however. No, by my mother’s account, he walked six out of seven days of the week, always acknowledging the Sabbath. It was simply that he had always been a fixture to my then young mind, a piece of the landscape if you will. It wasn’t until that November day that I began to inquire as to his existence.
Mom said she’d tell me some other day.
I clung to my curiosity for a week or so, at least that’s what my mother reported, bringing it up every day at lunch as I tore into a bologna and cheese sandwich. But being five years old, my attention span wasn’t the longest and my mind quickly shifted gears to dinosaurs and race cars and other such things that drive down the neural highways of such a young mind.
And as I grew and grew, my mind became occupied with new ideas. Basketball, girls, cars, money. The thought of the old man was left on some old dirt road in the recesses of my mind, which was easily done due to the decrease of his walks. I remember Dad mentioning to Mom one day over breakfast and the morning paper that the fellow had been suffered a fall, like old men so often do, and had been put into a home.
In the spring of my Junior year of high school, we received word of his death. I think Alicia was away at school at this point. I remember because it was the first funeral I actually recall attending. And as I stood aside from his casket, Mom and Dad chatting and giving condolences to his relatives that they had never once met, it was then that his walks re-entered my consciousness.
“Mom,” I had asked as we walked through the parking lot to our car, “why did Mr. Blanding walk the property so much back when I was, like, six or seven?”
Dad chuckled. “The old kook was nuts.” Mom glared at him and made some quip about respecting the deceased.
“Wait, what?” I pushed, interested to hear more.
“Your father and I always thought he was going through early stages of dementia. I believe that his son mentioned something about his babbling on about nonsense in his last days.”
“Whattaya mean?” I had pushed.
Mom, exasperated from the social conventions that one must adhere to when attending such events, said, “When we bought the property from him, he had one condition. That was to let him continue to walk around it as he so pleased.”
“Did he just miss the scenery or something?” I had asked.
“The old codger was looking for Wonderland or some hoodoo like that.” Dad mocked.
“He was looking for fairies, or fairy land, something silly like that. Like I said, he was going through dementia.”
“Fairy land?”
“He said when he was a boy, he was exploring a cave he had found when he found a book inside. On a pedestal or something.” Mom elaborated.
“And that’s not even the weirdest bit of it,” Dad chimed in.
“Jerry, would you hush? Anyways, he said that after reading a bit of this book the cave began to glow and suddenly through the other side he could see what he would only ever describe as the Land of the Fairies.”
“Huh.” I mused.
“There was about a week when you were about, oh, four or five, that you kept asking me about why he walked around all the time. I just didn’t tell you because it seemed like a silly thing to leave on an impressionable mind. Plus I didn’t want you looking for caves. Those are dangerous places for little boys to end up.”
My mother was always right. It’s something I wouldn’t admit until it was too late to listen to her, but she was always right.
“How do you even imagine that?” I said skeptically.
“Young boys have amazing imaginations,” she replied.
“Sure do.” Dad said, “You used to whine about little men, like gnomes or something, maybe an imp, I’m not sure, but you griped and belly-ached about little men your toys when you were three or four. Turns out you were just leaving them out near the woods and forgetting about them. Boy, you must’ve done some serious walkin’ for a kid your age.”
“Well, if he spent so long lookin’ for it, why? He coulda just gone when he found it if he was wantin’ to go.” I recall asking.
“Wanted to say goodbye to his folks is what he told me,” Dad informed. “Swears he went home and packed some things, announced he was going, and then ends up spending the next sixty-somethin’ years tryin’ to find it again. Prolly shoulda been committed if ya ask me.”
Yesterday, I couldn’t have told you about that conversation if you’d asked me. I could have told you about Alicia moving off to San Francisco and cutting off contact with the family, I could have told you about the day I met my wife, the day we had Brian, all the big things. But it’s now that all the tiny things are coming back.
I should have listened to Mom about the adventurous nature of little boys and their active imaginations. I forgot about that somewhere in all my studies and court cases. I had fully intended on moving to the city for life, and I was there for five years before Dad had a heart attack. I always guessed it was all the butter. But Mom couldn’t handle all the land herself and I couldn’t let the family farm go.
I wish I had. I wish Caitlyn and I had stayed in Richmond and I wish Brian had been born and raised to be occupied with video games and television instead of the outdoors and exploration.
But it’s been five days and the search teams are giving up. The footprints end in the middle of a clearing and the dogs can’t track the scent anywhere.
I regret two weeks ago when I didn’t connect my son’s dream about the people in his closet to the stories of the little men my four year old self told. I wish I’d never mentioned the old man and Fairy Land in response to his telling me about finding his favorite stuffed bear out near the woods. I just wanted him to be more imaginative, not a stuffy lawyer like his old man.
The police are talking sinkholes, but my mind keeps going back to that old man, Mr. Blanding, and his walks. And every time it does, I get the idea to start walking myself, and each time I feel like I’ve got a looser and looser grasp on my sanity.
But the thing that haunts me most, the thing that keeps churning my stomach and causing a burn in my tight throat, is that if my boy did find some sort of entrance to some sort of Fairy Land, and I hate to even say those words, I hate to even acknowledge the idea, but still yet, if he did, then why didn’t he want to come home and tell me goodbye?
When my parents bought this farm, they were looking for a place to raise a family. The two hard-working, level-headed people that I remember them as realized that the streets of their city, that their small one-bedroom apartment, wasn’t a place to rear children. Alicia was on the way at the time, and the story goes that Dad worked nearly 80 hours a week throughout the pregnancy to get them out of what they would label a “hell hole”.
Mom always told us, I remember, that they when they found the farm, when they realized it was the perfect fit, that it was feasible and where they could envision themselves, she said it seemed like a fairytale. Like they were closing in on their “happily ever after”. And for the most part, it was.
For them.
My earliest memory of the old man is blurry, and with age I’ve lost some of the finer details. I just remember that it was a frigid day in November and that he walked the property for nearly four hours, which to the mind of a five year old is an eternity.
It’s not that it was the first time that I had seen the old man, however. No, by my mother’s account, he walked six out of seven days of the week, always acknowledging the Sabbath. It was simply that he had always been a fixture to my then young mind, a piece of the landscape if you will. It wasn’t until that November day that I began to inquire as to his existence.
Mom said she’d tell me some other day.
I clung to my curiosity for a week or so, at least that’s what my mother reported, bringing it up every day at lunch as I tore into a bologna and cheese sandwich. But being five years old, my attention span wasn’t the longest and my mind quickly shifted gears to dinosaurs and race cars and other such things that drive down the neural highways of such a young mind.
And as I grew and grew, my mind became occupied with new ideas. Basketball, girls, cars, money. The thought of the old man was left on some old dirt road in the recesses of my mind, which was easily done due to the decrease of his walks. I remember Dad mentioning to Mom one day over breakfast and the morning paper that the fellow had been suffered a fall, like old men so often do, and had been put into a home.
In the spring of my Junior year of high school, we received word of his death. I think Alicia was away at school at this point. I remember because it was the first funeral I actually recall attending. And as I stood aside from his casket, Mom and Dad chatting and giving condolences to his relatives that they had never once met, it was then that his walks re-entered my consciousness.
“Mom,” I had asked as we walked through the parking lot to our car, “why did Mr. Blanding walk the property so much back when I was, like, six or seven?”
Dad chuckled. “The old kook was nuts.” Mom glared at him and made some quip about respecting the deceased.
“Wait, what?” I pushed, interested to hear more.
“Your father and I always thought he was going through early stages of dementia. I believe that his son mentioned something about his babbling on about nonsense in his last days.”
“Whattaya mean?” I had pushed.
Mom, exasperated from the social conventions that one must adhere to when attending such events, said, “When we bought the property from him, he had one condition. That was to let him continue to walk around it as he so pleased.”
“Did he just miss the scenery or something?” I had asked.
“The old codger was looking for Wonderland or some hoodoo like that.” Dad mocked.
“He was looking for fairies, or fairy land, something silly like that. Like I said, he was going through dementia.”
“Fairy land?”
“He said when he was a boy, he was exploring a cave he had found when he found a book inside. On a pedestal or something.” Mom elaborated.
“And that’s not even the weirdest bit of it,” Dad chimed in.
“Jerry, would you hush? Anyways, he said that after reading a bit of this book the cave began to glow and suddenly through the other side he could see what he would only ever describe as the Land of the Fairies.”
“Huh.” I mused.
“There was about a week when you were about, oh, four or five, that you kept asking me about why he walked around all the time. I just didn’t tell you because it seemed like a silly thing to leave on an impressionable mind. Plus I didn’t want you looking for caves. Those are dangerous places for little boys to end up.”
My mother was always right. It’s something I wouldn’t admit until it was too late to listen to her, but she was always right.
“How do you even imagine that?” I said skeptically.
“Young boys have amazing imaginations,” she replied.
“Sure do.” Dad said, “You used to whine about little men, like gnomes or something, maybe an imp, I’m not sure, but you griped and belly-ached about little men your toys when you were three or four. Turns out you were just leaving them out near the woods and forgetting about them. Boy, you must’ve done some serious walkin’ for a kid your age.”
“Well, if he spent so long lookin’ for it, why? He coulda just gone when he found it if he was wantin’ to go.” I recall asking.
“Wanted to say goodbye to his folks is what he told me,” Dad informed. “Swears he went home and packed some things, announced he was going, and then ends up spending the next sixty-somethin’ years tryin’ to find it again. Prolly shoulda been committed if ya ask me.”
Yesterday, I couldn’t have told you about that conversation if you’d asked me. I could have told you about Alicia moving off to San Francisco and cutting off contact with the family, I could have told you about the day I met my wife, the day we had Brian, all the big things. But it’s now that all the tiny things are coming back.
I should have listened to Mom about the adventurous nature of little boys and their active imaginations. I forgot about that somewhere in all my studies and court cases. I had fully intended on moving to the city for life, and I was there for five years before Dad had a heart attack. I always guessed it was all the butter. But Mom couldn’t handle all the land herself and I couldn’t let the family farm go.
I wish I had. I wish Caitlyn and I had stayed in Richmond and I wish Brian had been born and raised to be occupied with video games and television instead of the outdoors and exploration.
But it’s been five days and the search teams are giving up. The footprints end in the middle of a clearing and the dogs can’t track the scent anywhere.
I regret two weeks ago when I didn’t connect my son’s dream about the people in his closet to the stories of the little men my four year old self told. I wish I’d never mentioned the old man and Fairy Land in response to his telling me about finding his favorite stuffed bear out near the woods. I just wanted him to be more imaginative, not a stuffy lawyer like his old man.
The police are talking sinkholes, but my mind keeps going back to that old man, Mr. Blanding, and his walks. And every time it does, I get the idea to start walking myself, and each time I feel like I’ve got a looser and looser grasp on my sanity.
But the thing that haunts me most, the thing that keeps churning my stomach and causing a burn in my tight throat, is that if my boy did find some sort of entrance to some sort of Fairy Land, and I hate to even say those words, I hate to even acknowledge the idea, but still yet, if he did, then why didn’t he want to come home and tell me goodbye?