As published on Credo Espoir March 19, 2020
written by Mary Anna Kruch
Home is a safe place for many of us. A place we know we can find rest, shelter from the real and digital worlds, and in the best cases, peace. In 1951 my mother and dad brought me home from the hospital to a large, two-story house on a maple tree-lined street in Detroit. There, my brother, sister, and I safely lived, played on the porches, and stayed out til the streetlights came on. About five years later we moved to the suburbs, played outdoors minus the porches, and were safe on a street with seedling oak trees. The house in the suburbs remains unchanged today except for the size of the trees and the absence of children playing. The house in Detroit is no longer there, where a safe place had been. I wrote about this after a recent visit, in the poem, “Porches on Springfield Street,” published in the 2019 Wayne Literary Review:
“…The street seemed quiet, barren, but for one old man
smoking on the steps of his old porch, who raised his hand to me.
I pointed to an empty, weed-covered space
next to another hole – just two huge holes
where porches had been playgrounds.
I asked about the maple trees.
All gone, he told me. Long gone.”
Although the Detroit house no longer exists, the photos and early memories provide inspiration for poetry as well as an appreciation of my present home, in which I have lived for several years. I am not one for change. So I was fortunate to meet my husband, a Vietnam veteran, when I was an undergrad at Michigan State University. The many dark, PTSD days evened out with visits to
the family farm in northern Michigan, where he was raised. The marriage came with a wonderful set of second parents who lived into their mid-90s there. One of my favorite places is the reflective pond, graced by willows. I always manage to find time to take a solitary walk, opening myself to the farm’s natural beauty. An old farm road runs from the farm house on the hill down to the pond. In “Farm Meditations: Spring,” my poem in issue 4 of Credo Espoir, I describe the scene in spring:
“Late May lilacs halo
the old log kitchen,
grow sky-high near the well house,
temper winter’s failings.
A dirt road runs downhill
alongside grass, greened from spring rain,
to the willow-bordered pond.
Past an abandoned chicken coop,
last year’s poplar seedlings
push up and away into adolescence;
a rusted harrow rests
where Guernseys once grazed…”
My husband’s parents are gone, but with my husband being the oldest of eight, we have a lot of family. One brother and his wife now live on the farm. Although some of us own parcels of the farmland, the part with the farm house, barns, and pond are not ours, so we don’t have a say in decisions that are made, particularly changes. Bob’s brother and his wife do the best they can to keep the place up, but it is almost an impossible job. Instead of working on a barn roof, my sister-in-law decided that the first thing that needed to be done was to take down four of the six willow trees. This was a change that many family members did not see coming. I write about this is my poem, “Farm Meditations: The Willows:”
“…Mom and Dad are long buried;
all but two willows
farthest from the banks
cut down. These days
the pond lies still, half-filled
with algae blooms and mud
minus the Tarzan rope
minus the merriment…”
The combination of changes to the natural beauty of the place and not having Grandma and Grandpa there has been an impediment to family time spent there. Also from “Farm Meditations: The Willows:”
“…when everyone still spoke
when there was no holding back
when we leaned into one another
around the fire pit
told jokes, poked fun
watched the kids Tarzan off the rope
of a sturdy branch –
a come-together place
held by the willows’ long, tender branches…
These days
the pond lies still, half-filled
with algae blooms and mud
minus the Tarzan rope
minus the merriment…”
Still, our farm, our home, is legally not all ours. New owners have the right to make changes. I think, in their own way, they try to carry on some of the our family traditions. Also from “Farm Meditations: Spring:”
“…Although another gardener
coaxes plants to flower
in Mom’s quarter-acre garden,
and Dad’s John Deere slumbers
in a corner of the front barn --
the family farm still breathes
most richly in the spring.”
My immediate family and I still stop by the farm, but most often, we continue to feather our own nests, allow the front yard sycamore to grow, and make our own homes castles, if not farms.
Read more of Mary Anna Kruch's work in Issue 4 of Credo Espoir.
Photos 1 and 2 of the house on Springfield St. and of author’s brother John pulling neighborhood children in the Radio Flyer are by the author’s father, Gidio Scenga (1953); photos 3 and 4 are of the N. Michigan farm (2013), and photo 5 is of the Sycamore tree in front of the present home (2019) by Mary Anna Kruch.
