She Hammered Her Grief into Wood
A DAM woman! SHE.
We continued to live at our grandmothers house. The one with the rats that ate our toes at night.
But, during the daytime we needed space a place of our own and we were determined to build it. That is my mother and us.
My mother, Megan, examined the bottom house of my grandmother’s two bedroom house and decided to remove all the old and new papers and buckets stored there to make space for living quarters.
At that time the bottom house was enclosed in part with old flattened tar or oil drums. The metal was sturdy.
My uncle Herman, a blacksmith had hammered the drums flat in his workshop in a paddock next door to make a storage space for my grandmother.
That space was going to be our home—made from the wood from the manse.
People who lived in the manse are holy. Are we going to become holy like the people who lived in the manse?
In the Anglican tradition, the “Father” sprinkled holy water on people, and they were specially protected. If some got on the manse wood, I bet we would be protected from harm and danger—seen and unseen. I wondered.
Day after day, we helped my mother hold the wood we had brought home as she beat her grief and hopes into them with hammer and nails.
Once her hands were busy, I tended to think that she seemed happy. Since the tragedy that burnt our new old house on Brush Dam down to the ground, I had never seen her cry.
Crying was not something I associated my mother with.
She was strong.
She was a tall, brown-skinned beauty, and with big feet. She was a builder. She was a protector. She built us a home and no rats could bother us. A DAM woman! SHE.