The Magic of Hay Bales

When I was growing up, I used to visit my Grandmother who lived on a place in Maryland called Rockdale. Although her genteel house never hinted of it, it was a working farm that ran to several acres. Over the years, there were a hundred secrets and mysteries for us kids to experience.

Down the lane there were apple orchards. In the front yard was a huge snowball bush and what used to be a fountain. A strange-looking gazebo sweetly rotted away.

There was a bridge where we used to play Pooh Sticks. The trickle of Winters Run went underneath, and all the way around the property. We could go swimming in it if we were willing to brave the steep climb down through the woods to the sandy banks below.

One of my favorite places was the summer house. It was made of stone and had a peaked roof and no windows. On summer nights, my Grandmother would have parties and hanging paper lanterns along the garden.

But during the day the summer house was unused. I used to sit in there and pretend I was a gypsy living in the woods with a horse. I would imagine my bed over there, my fireplace here, and in the nooks along the eaves I would place my treasures.

Beyond the fence was a huge rock that I called my dreaming rock. The field was rarely plowed and the grass would be waist high and blow in the wind. Sitting on that rock, it seemed I was in the middle of a huge ocean. Sometimes I could see cows in distant pastures.

My other favorite place was the top of the hill where there was a particular tree I used to lie under. It was a willow tree and I liked the patterns it made with the sun.

That was the hill where my mother would take us blackberry picking and raspberry picking with buckets filled to the brim and our legs covered with little red marks from the briars.

In the fall, we would play with the milkweed silks peeping out from their hard pods, and blow wishes to the wind. If I twirled around very fast, all the colors of the autumn trees would melt into a swirling rainbow.

I especially liked it when I would see bales of hay neatly stacked. It seemed like magic. Who did it - and when? It was always a question in my mind, "Will there be hay?" as I was climbing.

Only once I saw the tractor pull up and men jump off and load the bales onto a bed. The boy that drove the tractor was barely older than me. Maybe 13 or 14. I marveled at his prowess with the tractor and formed a crush. I named my kitten after him - Snooks.

I happened to see a photo of some hay bales today, and all these memories came tumbling out.

Dreaming in Technicolor

I recently received an email with some dream research that made me stop and think. One of the points was about dreaming in color which was seen to increase in subjects tested after 1960 as compared with 1915. The researchers had hypothesized that the increase in people found to dream in color might be attributed to the switch from black-and-white images on TV and film to color.

I can offer some anecdotal evidence about color dreaming. Long before my family even owned a TV, I dreamed in color. In fact, until around the age of 4 or 5, my dreams were in a particular kind of color that is more saturated and beautiful than real life. The trees and grass, for instance, were in various shades of blue and red and purple and pink and orange - all sorts of colors. There was almost no black or brown in my dreams, only these brighter colors.

I actually recall the last "technicolor" dream I had because I was so sad afterward. I never had those brightly colored dreams again.

I was standing on the banks of a pond. It was winter and there were people skating on the ice but I didn't feel cold and I was not dressed in winter clothing. The trees and grass were brightly colored, as I have described. Then I suddenly noticed for the first time in any of my dreams a little house - it was a small, brown cabin made of brown wood. There was smoke coming from the roof as if a fire was burning somewhere inside. I noticed skaters coming off the pond would then go into the little house, so I became curious.

I walked over and went into the house and smelled hot chocolate. People were getting warm drinking hot chocolate. The colors inside the house were what I now think of as "normal" and I had never dreamed of normal every-day colors before. I went over and got some hot chocolate for myself and drank it, even though I was not cold.

After that dream, I never saw the "real" bright colors anymore.

This dream might almost be one of those cautionary fairy tales where the hero is supposed to take the worn, leather bridle instead of the the silver or golden one. Or perhaps even worse - the one that advises you not to open a certain door.

I have more anecdotal evidence about color. I was told when I had my son that babies see colors more brightly that we do, and as they grow up, they learn to limit their color palette to match the expectations of others.

My son is bi-racial (his father is (black) African-American and I am (white) Scotch-Irish-French-American.) So we had a lot of friends of all different races and my son would often draw pictures of them with his crayons. Whenever he drew a dark-skinned person, he would make them purple. When he drew light-skinned people, he made them orange. I am sure these are the colors he actually saw because when he was older, the colors became more muted.

I have only had one black-and-white dream in my whole life and it really scared me because I was afraid the colors had disappeared. It was after I had been given sleeping pills after surgery in a hospital. The dream was also frightening because I didn't have any control over my dream body. I saw my son playing on a sliding board and he was going to fall, but I couldn't run over and catch him because the sidewalk I was standing on began to undulate like the ocean.

I have never taken sleeping pills again.

Sun and Rain

The rain, fond visitor
breath of warm
wet sky and
smell of trees
this is heaven's
kiss

All sensation
self-referent
enwrapped in
delusion
warm skin as
untrustworthy
as a cloud

The sun travels
across the sky
we abide
like helpless cattle
while seasons
revolve

All purposes
fleeting and empty
our teeming minds
dripping with
plans
we hardly
notice the
circle enclosing
our lifetimes.


I combined these two poems which were fragments I wrote in my journal in those moments while waiting for an appointment or a friend. I felt how much life is illustrated or demarcated by the weather and seasons, how much it informs our thoughts.