Inheritance

I went to the post office today and picked up the certified mail that contained my copy of Grandmother's will. No surprises. I was listed under the section that included family not inheriting any property. The will makes it sound like my brother and I did not inherit because my mother predeceased Grandmother.

When she was alive, however, my mother was always very clear that she had no desire to own any part of that land. For her, the land represented a difficult childhood, poverty, backbreaking work and physical abuse. She left the farm as soon as she graduated high school to make a life for herself someplace else. Mom went back several times a year, but only to see the people who were family and loved ones, not because of sentimentality for the place.

For me, Grandmother's farm is a place of more positive memories. Family gatherings, tables full of home grown food and pies, springs full of wildflowers, more stars at night than anyone could count. There were puppies and kittens, calves and biddies, spiders and scarab beetles, pill bugs and ant lions.

Many of my dreams are still set at Grandmother's farm. Not the farm as it is now, with subdivisions and light pollution crowding in more each day. Instead, the mythological farm of my childhood, where the woods seemed to go on forever and there were always new things to see, new things to learn and new places to explore. Where the grandchildren rode on the hood of the tractor, where an old camper became a spaceship, where the tire swing became mystical transport. Where warm eggs were grasped by children's hands and taken cautiously from their resting place under the mama chickens.

My inheritance is one of memories and values, dreams and interests.

I've bought my own property, just as my grandparents left home and bought their own. I've planted my own vegetables, started my own grapevine, set up my own kitchen.
I've found my own woods to explore, my own starlit skies.

I may never own land in Florida, where generations of my family have lived, struggled and sometimes thrived. But I carry my predecessors' work ethic and their appreciation for beauty with me on my own frontiers of living.