Wednesday, 21 October 2009
Sugar Molds or My Own Private Bamyian Budda
By Suzanne of Au Fil du Temps
What did they look like, those sugar molds hidden by my grandmother under the floor boards of her bedroom in 1894? A time when she was a young bride and they were building the second story of their house. A humble house with no running water, no electricity, bearing the vernacular style of its time and neighborhood.
She wanted to perpetuate a tradition that had gone on and on long before her and, she thought, would continue after her. And which consisted in hiding everyday objects in the very structure of your house for future generations to find. Because, back then, no house was literally demolished. Everything was used again.
It wasn't some environmental friendly trend. It was just basic common sense. An old house would turn into a new but smaller house, or a small building. Nothing was wasted. Not the lumber and not the furnishings of the houses. It was also a way to honor the hard labor of men that had hewed the beams, cast the door and window hinges and locks, raised the frames, etc.
In her mind, one day her own house would have to come down and be taken apart. And, in the process, someone would find the sugar molds. Things would unfold there like for the generations before her.
I was very young and she was already very old when she confided in me the location of the sugar molds. I immediately saw that as my own private mission - remembering the location. And I kept the secret for decades, believing that that day when we would find them, I'd be at the front row, proud and probably teary eyed.
But that turned out to be a naïve assessment of life. Because, as the estates went and the wills were read, life meandered in a different direction.
Until December 2003, we had managed to keep the house in the family - that was, until it was sold to “developers” (i.e. speculators).
Then, for three years, nothing. Nothing happened. The property - a house more than a century old, a big barn, a garage and some minor buildings, were sometimes listed and put on the market at a horrendous price. Then taken off the market and put back again with a price ridiculously raised or lowered. The house was lived in, and its architectural integrity had been maintained to a certain degree. Most of what had been done to it could still be undone.
Then, a month ago, a hundred years of history were wiped off the map. In less than 48 hours and without the legally required posting of a demolition permit, the house and other buildings were brought to the ground and the site cleaned out.
In that house there were also frescos. Paintings done directly on the walls. Those paintings had been done by a traveling painter at the beginning of the last century. And those were now gone too, along with the tradition they portrayed.
We have partial portions of them showing in black and white pictures with young kids dressed in their first communion attire, or newly engaged couples, old aunts and uncles in their Sunday best. Today, those landscapes and biblical scenes are no longer, just plaster dust in the cold wind of this winter.
Those speculators added insult to injury. Not only did they have a total lack of respect for the heritage value of that house, of its components and its history, but no recycling of any part of it took place.
Everything gone to the dump: the old window panes with the tiny bubbles in the glass, the French windows, the architectural hardware, the corner armoire, the lumber, the timber, the moldings, everything. All to the dump. And so did the barn wood, precious lumber with a patina that shows the passage of a century. All gone too. Nothing salvaged.
Before feeling scandalized by the brutality of this massacre, my first emotion was to feel the betrayal. The betrayal of my grandmother. I had not been there to fetch the sugar molds. The molds she had put there for us. All of a sudden, my many-decades-long secret had become totally obsolete. Like the key of a lost treasure chest. As though my grandmother, her tradition, her very life had been ridiculed.
The power of money, its arrogance and the language of bulldozers cannot be met. We just don't weigh enough in the larger picture of things.
Soon, where that hundred-year-old house stood, will be a row of townhouses in a nondescript style and poor quality lumber that won't even last a decade. They'll go for a quarter of a million dollars, probably more. And in those square feet where lay the house of my grandmother, a small space where dozens of kids were raised and an extended family housed including all the hired hands for the work in the fields - there, you might find a household of no more than two adults, one kid and one dog.
My grandmother died some twenty years ago. Her house went down last month. And since I was unable to get to the sugar molds she had intended for us, I have to look into her life and try to find what lay there for me to find.
When I turned to my memories about her, her life, her household, what comes to mind immediately is her quiet tenacity and her endless creativity. Her free spirit. Also, the fact that she cared equally for kids of the neighborhood that came to her to confide, the stray cats she fed on her doorstep and the visitors coming after church in their Sunday best.
In the end, what lingers in my mind is her tranquil pride and her magnificent dignity. And that, no developer or speculator will ever be able to take away from me.
Tomorrow is International Women's Day. I find it fitting that I wrote this piece today. A good timing. I couldn't think of a better story to honor my grandmother who has had and will always have a very special place in my heart and a very important role in my life.
[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]
Posted by Ronni Bennett at 05:30 AM | Permalink | Email this post
Comments
Your story is so beautifully written that it made me cry. How sad your experience was! I still mourn for my grandparents' house, the dearest place of my childhood, but at least it's alive in my memory and my dreams.
Posted by: Lyn Burnstine on Oct 21, 2009 11:30:44 AM
