A Life of My Own. Donna Wilhelm

hills, meandering streams, and secret caves. Driving there took us through Connecticut tobacco country, where miles of low-rising, voluminous canopies flapped ever so slightly in the breeze, not tall enough to be tents, yet appearing endless and ominous to a little girl with a big imagination. “Tatush, what goes on under those long white sheets?” I asked.

      He tightened his grip on the polished wood of the steering wheel. “Don’t ask foolish questions.” Dad didn’t want his reverie disturbed. I retreated to my fantasies: Under the white-covered fields, hordes of men with dark skin labored—bent and sweating. They sorted whatever grew in those fields into massive bundles.

      Decades later, still curious about those mysterious canopies, I did some research. During the 1940s and early 1950s our route to Old Glendale Farm took us through “shade tobacco” country. The white canopies of my childhood fantasies were actually meant to increase the humidity around the crop of tobacco designated for manufacture of high-end cigars.

      In the 1950s, smokers received no dire health warnings. Advertising genius of that era instead created a mystique about smoking. Adults puffed away guilt free. Gutsy kids hid in the bushes, coughing and smoking like they were grownups. Glamorous Hollywood stars like Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, and James Dean smoked to look sexy, savvy, and virile. Magazines and billboards promoted The Marlboro Man as rugged and handsome. Smoke swirling around his Stetson, he gazed out over America’s big, bold country, and passersby were hooked. For almost a century, this coveted harvest was Connecticut’s number one agricultural export.

      Dad slowed the mighty Packard as we approached the rural village of Hebron and passed a cluster of stone houses, momentary interruptions to the surrounding farmland. In those years Hebron had no enticing farm stalls with fresh produce for sale, no country store serving hand-churned ice cream—what it did have was lots and lots of stone. Centuries before, Yankee ancestors had tilled up more stones than soil and used them to build boundary fences so solid they would last hundreds of years.

      Soon the road narrowed into a single country lane, where distance between the roadside mailboxes suggested the size of a property. Anyone wandering by would think Old Glendale Farm was modest, if they judged it by the ordinary stone farmhouse. The two-story structure was built on a slight rise set back about fifty feet from the road. The Packard bumped onto the rocky driveway alongside the house. The farmhouse’s façade seemed to have been crafted by quilters working in fieldstones. A quirky wood balcony, too small for a human occupant, jutted over the front door. I never could come up with a practical purpose for it. Across the front yard, wildflowers danced on uncut grass, no sign of a human gardener working a lawn mower. The ramshackle toolshed behind the house had no visitors. On the opposite side of the road, the derelict gray barn loomed. Who else, besides me, could hear the ghostly mooing and jostling of past dairy cows waiting for farm hands to milk them?

      Unable to contain my excitement, I leaped out of my seat as soon as the motor stopped and scrambled up the stone steps to the concrete veranda that wrapped around the house. From all sides, the views were glorious. I breathed in the fragrance of the land—a heady mix of field pollen, rotting apples fallen from the trees, and seedlings sprouting in the vegetable garden. Dad planted seeds on impulse. Given the randomness of our visits to the farm, we never knew what had survived for us to eat. Eyes squeezed shut, I plopped down on the cement and began my counting game: “One, two, three, four, how many things do I remember—”

      “Danusia,” Dad called. “Come help.” He stood by the Packard with all its doors wide open. Mother wouldn’t let us leave the house in Hartford until she’d stuffed the back seat of the car full of chipped bowls filled with food we’d never eat: oozing leftover ham, mounds of over-mashed potatoes, and dollops of cooked cabbage layered with solidified grease. Loaves of sliced pumpernickel and rye bread got harder by the minute in their paper envelopes wedged between the ubiquitous squat jars of Polish dills and pickled red beets. On the car floor sat stacks of Popular Mechanics magazine and a week’s backlog of The Hartford Courant and Novy Swiat that fed Dad’s insatiable need to know what was happening in the world. Upright next to the periodicals, a large brown paper bag held my stuff: my pull-on rubber boots, pink chenille bathrobe, flannel pajamas, and finally, my treasured collection of paper dolls in the fliptop cigar box. Folded on top was my yellow raincoat for storms that came without warning and the scratchy wool sweater that I hated but wore anyway when it turned cold.

      We loaded up and made our way to the back door, only to drop everything on the cement while Dad fumbled with the rusted lock that never got oiled. Door unlatched, we reloaded and staggered into the farmhouse kitchen, looking for empty space on the long wood table. No luck—it was overrun with crockery from our last trip to the farm, of Mother’s cooking long discarded. I don’t think disorganized Mother kept track of her diminished supply of dishes in Hartford. Maybe she just kept buying more Polish blue and white pottery as a way to remember her heritage.

      We piled all our stuff wherever we found room—Dad and I had no sense of keeping things neat or clean. At the farm, we usually gobbled what we couldn’t have in Hartford: fresh eggs from our neighbor’s coop; canned Campbell’s soup disparaged by Mother; and varieties of pears and apples untouched by insecticides. Oblivious to disorder and disrepair at the farm, Dad and I heeded only Mother Nature and the Emerson radio’s weather reports.

      The entire second floor was mine to explore. I raced up a flight of creaky stairs, combing my way through the cobwebbed hallway connecting too many bedrooms to remember. Except for mine—the best and the oddest shape, as if it had been sliced away from the bigger room next door. Inside was everything I needed: an iron bed frame hugging a single mattress; one rickety chest of drawers; a drop-leaf table inscribed with old graffiti; and a petite chair, the seat unraveling into raffia puddles on the floor. No closet—wooden pegs along the wall were more than enough for my meager wardrobe. The casement windows begged, “Fling us open!” And I did.

      My childhood fantasies reinvented Mother Nature as my beautiful companion at the farm. With every change of season, I cast Mother Nature as a beneficent queen with transformational powers. In spring, she coaxed the abundant trees to bud in yellow and pink so that they appeared to me as billowing ball gowns. In summer, she covered ponds with green algae and cast a dancing net of flying insects over them. When fall came, she dipped her paintbrush into earthy shades of umber, flashes of coral and hues of brown. In winter she became the arrogant Ice Queen, freezing every surface into sparkling diamonds, gleaming platinum and shimmering gold. My little room at Old Glendale Farm became a fantasy setting that Goldilocks herself would’ve loved.

      Dad slept downstairs. His bedroom at the farm was a converted storage closet near the kitchen—its’ walls made of thin wood siding were an inadequate shield against the harsh outdoor temperatures, meaning inside was cold and drafty all year. But Dad was used to sleeping cold, and alone. At home in Hartford, he spent his nights in the enclosed and unheated sleeping porch that was beneath the boarders’ second-floor kitchen. As a child, I never saw him enter Mother’s bedroom. And as an adult, I reflected back on the emotional barriers and striking contrasts between my parents. Mother was a woman who unleashed drama and temperamental outbursts that kept the many boarders and me on guard and in line. Dad, on the other hand, was a man of silence and emotional detachment, seemingly oblivious to boarding house turmoil and Mother’s volatility.

      Tranquil days at the farm could have brought my dad and me closer together. Yet even there, we remained separate and undisturbed. Nearly every morning, I’d scrounge up odd bits of bread and apples for breakfast and listen to the weather report. If the forecast was good, I’d shove a small flashlight into my burlap sack and take off on yet another solo expedition to rediscover hidden caves I called “my secret places.” For hours, managing to beam the flashlight, I’d forage in their damp and dark interiors for ancient arrowheads and exposed bits of what must have been Indian pottery. On my way home, I’d sing out my childish glee, accompanied by the rattling burlap bag of oddities.

      On days when the weather was iffy, I’d stay closer to home, most likely sitting on the edge of the cement veranda and dangling my short legs over the scratchy cement foundation. I’d watch Dad in the distance driving high upon the antiquated tractor. Never did he hoist bags of seeds or hitch a plow to the tractor. As I tracked