For recent new readers, here’s the how and why that the Mailboxes and Old Barns weekly post got started over three years ago:
Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks that told us where we were and how far we had to go in the high dry prairie country of northeastern Montana where I grew up. Sometimes the mailboxes signaled “home” and the end of the road; at other times, barely visible through swirling snow, an old barn told us we had miles to go. When I started compiling word pictures of those times a few years back, I realized they were like those mailboxes and old barns–still identifying important places along the road, still signaling where I am and how far I have to go.
Today’s MBOB is a wandering-around-the-Treehouse-trails-visit – coming as it does on the heels of a two month hiatus for me.

Either before or after you work your way through today’s words, I hope you’ll kick this video on and think about why we sort of like to watch patterns done well, actions prepared thoughtfully, why we enjoy shadows and lights that play in sunlight or on bright moonlit snow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3lDpkToKck

ZurichMike, Menagerie, WeeWeed, Dan, Stella, Texan59, and Sundance – thank you for your love and your willingness to fill this space with your stories for a couple of months of Sundays. The Mailboxes and Old Barns portrayed here will continue to be a mix of yours and mine…we see by experience that there are stories to be told. We have more contributions from you all scheduled for the weeks ahead and are looking for more. One of our regulars is preparing material regarding her family’s history that will take us back to their arrival here – in the 1600s.

You all have stories about life in these United States some of which first had life breathed into them in 1963; some of them in 1947; and, some of them in 1869.
The stuff that lives in our hearts is feared and despised by those who fear America at her best.

They fear you and me

even when we’re not at our best

just because we’re here

and we remember

• Is there anything of faith in you?

• Do you remember a father’s voice telling you a story or calling me/you to account because we didn’t do what we were told to do when we were told to do it?

• Somewhere in the dust of memory is there the swish of the teacher’s chalk as she listed homework assignments on blackboard in a silent classroom and twenty-eight of your classmates, every one a friend or neighbor, quietly and quickly copied what she wrote?

• Do you remember the quietness of late evening on a summer’s night when we were finishing a game of catch in the farmyard under the yard light or under the street lights at the corner?  (like Texan59)

• In childhood did you have habits of honesty illustrated when you ran errands for the owner of the butcher shop – having his money in our pocket when you ran out the door and some customer’s money in your pocket when you came running back in after delivering a package? Did you ever feel shame because you were caught stealing a dime off the kitchen table or out of your mother’s purse?

• Is there a fact-based fear in your heart as you watch our national foundations crumbling?  That fear is the shadow cast by memory and understanding.

• Is there some skill or response that is default for you, knowing what to do in a pinch because you saw a family member do it in 1942? When my eldest brother wintered over in Antarctica with the 1957-58 IGY/Expedition, one of their ice tractors broke down. He commented at the time, before he bartered with the cook (Klinger-like) for some kitchen kettles as a source of metal in order to hack out a temporary replacement part so they could get moving again, “My dad would never have left his combine standing in the field in August for lack of a part.” The reason he said that is because he saw that.

Regardless of the degree of focus we have on the issues, regardless of our experience at fighting back or our track record for fighting well, our efforts are not wasted and are close enough to the target to have caused the anti-Americans to flinch in fury.
They are lying Goliaths roaring at all the little Davids who stand in the midst of the chaos, each with our five smooth stones, wearing familiar gear.
Some Treepers have killed more lions with their bare hands than others but each of us has our own five smooth stones suited to our experience, knowledge,  and intentions.
We are living history and we are living history.  Personal history is the one square foot of time in which each of us stands, the one microphone each of us has.

What are the silhouettes or shadows or patterns in your stories? How do they strengthen and fit the foundations that make your life what it is?

Here are some of mine

our big old barn backlit by lightning as a storm moves through at midnight, making everything bright as day, my chin is propped on the old window sill next to the bed, head leaning against a scrunched up pillow as I watch the show in utter contentment through the open window – the better to get the full audio of the thunder claps that frame the lightning

the shadow of a hawk swooping across the yard toward the hen house which sends fifty squawking hens flapping toward the small opening for the safety inside the coop

 checked corn planted so carefully that every diagonal glance shows reveals straight lines of evenly spaced corn stalks

the advance notice of trouble given by a pattern in the wheatfield when rust appears on the stalks in mid-July, giving the farmer a heads-up that this year’s crop is in trouble

the dappled shadows of fully-leafed trees in June that make it easy for ten thousand ants to walk unnoticed through the corner of the old garden where the fence posts lean sideways just a bit, now guarding only untended asparagus shoots and not bothered much by the occasional meanderings of a milk cow who wonders at this bit of fence that keeps her neither out nor in

the silhouette of an impossibly perfect rose on the only rose bush we ever had – for its few days of perfection, it lords it over the petunias which will last far longer, humbly giving their colorful blooms by the dozens

every winter, as the pattern of things goes, new baby chicks were shipped in by Great Northern freight by mid-March in their thousands, not for Easter entertainment but for next winter’s food

We don’t tell our stories as cranky old checker-players but as wolverines and patriots who will not let freedoms go. Like the dewy spider web that is there this morning when it wasn’t last night, our stories simply say KILROY WAS HERE.

Over the past five months, I have shared four posts that described the silhouettes and shadows of the path my husband and I were walking. Sundance  shared with you on a couple of other posts when the path took such a sharp turn that I had to walk apart in silence. Know that all of your kind responses to those posts were read again and again.

Some of you had great empathy and just wanted to hug us. You did.

Some of you wanted to just sit with us quietly and pray for us. You did.

Some of you just wept with us, shedding tears from the pain of your own burden as well. We wept with you.

Some of you shared a Scripture. We read it.

Some of you posted a beautiful music video, knowing how we enjoyed music. We listened to them and watched them.

Some of you quoted poetry, just like sending us a beautiful card in the mail. We opened it and read it.

Some of you just said you felt helpless. You stood by us in the fellowship of suffering.

Everything and anything any of you wrote found its mark.

Virtual relationships on the internet? Oh, yes, if by virtual we mean the same, just like,  providing the same benefits as – face-to-face friendships. Yes. You gave that.