I am currently sixty-seven years of age, and have some ability to see or hear what others cannot. What I am telling of in this writing took place when I was about ten years old, one of the earliest events I recall with detail.
We lived on a farm that was in our family since 1791. First I must explain, my Mom had died from cancer and my Dad, being a farmer, worked many long hours of the day. It was a different time then, I was raised to know right from wrong, and although left alone I knew where on the farm my Dad could be found.
Before my Mom had died, she and my Dad had purchased a small horse for me named Boots. She and I were best friends through the next few years, meandering around the old roads and paths that covered our hilly six hundred plus acre New England farm. This event took place on an early summer day about 1960.
I was too lazy to saddle Boots up and so we were just hanging around together inside her pasture. The pasture was part of an old apple orchard and part grazing grass placed on one of the larger hills. At the top there was a brook, where on this day we were heading. I lay on the back of Boots with my eyes closed, enjoying her slow ramble when, without warning, Boots had come to a quick stop and I felt a ripple pass over her back, so I struggled to a sitting position. She had begun to do a prancing dance, and I feared I would fall.
Where Boots drank from the brook, there was an old stone wall, one of many running around and over the fields and woods. Beyond that a sturdy barbed wire fencing that my Dad had placed. The brook ran in front of both fences. I thought I could see something move and rubbed my sleepy eyes, trying to focus on this movement. Boots was trying to head away, and I had to hold her reins firmly.
What I seemed to see was an older man wearing an odd hat, a light brown shirt and brown pants but no shoes. He wasn't clear as I faintly saw the woods and fence behind him. He was bending and lifting large rocks as best that I can explain. He appeared to be placing these stones on the top of the stone wall building it higher. Boots had stilled, feeling no danger, and we watched for a very short while, and the man looked up at us, and just faded away. I knew I had seen a moment of the past, but was still some afraid. Cantering away I shook my head in disbelief.
As always during supper, my Dad asked about my day. After listening, he first said never to lay down on the horse it was not safe. I can still picture him lifting his fork of food and slowly chewing. He then said, "That man was probably not from this century, probably a great great. How very lucky you were to see that moment from the past."
Later, in need of money, that section of the farm was sold, and new people built a home there. I have often wondered if they too have seen that faded worker from long ago.
Thank you all, for allowing me to share this simpler time with you, I welcome comments.
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I think your message to me today was the most honest, open, and sincere communication we've had in this entire sorry fiasco. Manafon is partly right; If you do go, I will miss you. He is mistaken in one regard: I do not need the last word; I've usually done enough damage -inadvertently or deliberately- by the time the last word is said.
I'm concerned that I don't remember calling you an old lady, but I can see how such diction is hurtful. I regret that I wrote that. You're only a decade older than my mother, and a decade younger than my mother-in-law. Being "old" is a choice; it is not a result of the Gregorian calendar. You have not made that choice; you have every right to have been offended. (Sidenote: oddly enough, I'm still a resident alien, though I'm beginning to consider dual citizenship; if I don't, I'll never be able to collect social security. It's why the government likes Resident Aliens: we pay into the system at the same rate as Citizens, but we're not allowed to collect money later.)
I'm afraid that your defensive responses pushed more of my buttons than I knew what to do with! Your natural defenses are your feelings; mine are logic and argumentation. You are in physical pain; my traumas have been extensive psychological scarring since childhood. I had parents with unreasonable standards and narcissistic attitudes; my mother's response to any situation was often affronted anger or passive-aggressive appeals for sympathy designed to make the other party feel bad for having gotten angry. I was also her psychotherapist, confident, and marriage counselor from the age of 8 until about 25, followed by over a decade of weekly phone calls in which I'd spend up to 45 minutes listening. I've spent much of the last decade trying to identify and accept my emotions as part of my life; I think I was around 12 when I couldn't deal with them any more (because my mother's emotional state governed everything in our house), so I locked them away. I always react badly -overreact badly, if you prefer- when an appeal to emotions/feelings is introduced in a discussion. The Greeks divided the art of rhetoric into three forms of appeal: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. Logic is statements, facts, reasoning, explaining, etc.; two people may disagree over the significance of data, but they agree that the data is the topic of debate. Ethics is morality, evaluations, opinions, traditions, and beliefs; two people may have totally different social taboos, but judging their relative moral stances allows for the possibility of compromise. Pathos relies upon empathy, sympathy, and the completely subjective experience of each person; this causes the most problems in human interaction because person A states "I feel_____," leaving person B with the options of conceding the point without objective evidence or explaining to person A what he or she *should* have felt instead. The appeal to Pathos, then, can be very effective because it bypasses the logic centers of the brain and channels raw emotion.
I suspect that I was frustrated by my incomprehension of your feelings' connection to a series of logic-based statements. I responded by ignoring my own feelings (whatever they may have been), and appealing to the reassuring solidity of logic.
Which Early American settlements? The ones with cyclopean stones held in place by pressure instead of mortar?
-Dan.