Take The Time To Learn The Old Stories

A trip through the country side the other day set me to pondering.

There were so many cool old barns, many relatively forgotten. A rare few still in good repair and used.

Time has rendered many obsolete.

Yet many of these old barns still stand, sturdy, against ravages of the seasons.

It' is interesting to me that time seems to have the same effect on some people too.
It is hard to imagine that a grandparent was once a child, or a teen!
I remember a friend of mine who was in her eighties, I knew her all my life. When I was a child, she was very tall with an intimidating air, so it seemed to a runny nose neighbor kid. When I advanced to the age she had been, she had advanced considerably in age, but that is when time brought us our friendship.
I remember the day she brought out one of her picture albums and showed me some pictures of when she was in her early teen years. We laughed as she took me down this lane of her memory to show me how she, with a few of her friends, had made swim suits out of rhubarb leaves, at a girl's camp in the mountains one summer.
She went on to tell me about when her husband and a friend, brought their first new table into their first new house, then how after trying, way past the point of exasperation, they had not succeeded in getting past the interior door, dividing the living room from the dining room, and were now talking about tearing out a wall. She laughed as she told me how she quietly gave them an idea of one last way to try, and how they, but not she, was surprised that it worked.
She then sent me on a errand to the basement to look at said table down in yon laundry room. Upon my return she continued telling me of the usefulness of that table and how she just couldn't bear to part with it, even though it had been in its present spot for some years now.
It's usefulness seemingly past.
She looked me square in the eye, as was her way, and you paid attention when she did too!
"You will come and get that table tomorrow night, take it home, you will use it as a sewing table, and you will remember me everytime you see it."
I did. And I do.

I remember the time she was walking across her living room, stopping in the middle of the room, leaning heavily on her walker, her scoliosis making it impossible for her to straighten up to her once regal height, "You know. It is so hard to to know that this body used to play center on the girls basketball team, and now it can barley make it across the room without a rest. This getting old is not always kind to us".


Old barns have stories.
Old houses have stories.
Old girl's and boy's have stories.
If you know someone that knows the stories, ask them to tell you. I promise you wont regret taking the time.