[RE]IMAGINING INA

Watching the autumn light and shadow play on the farm fields on an enchanted evening, my thoughts wandered back a century to my Grandmother Ina and how she must have lived in this house. KW

As the sun was setting and the house grew chilly, Ina pulled her old sweater more tightly around her shoulders. Another 15 minutes and she would have to light the kerosene lantern on the sconce above the wood cookstove. As it was, the north-facing kitchen was already too dark to read a recipe, but it would have to be darker yet before the kerosene lantern would make a difference.

Ina never tired of the magnificent effects that sun and shadow brought to the landscape – always something she hadn’t noticed before. But she would enjoy autumn more, Ina thought to herself, if it weren’t for the chill in the air that presaged winter. Winters were hard now, and especially hard for Jack, her husband. But – Christmas was always a bright spot for her, and it was time to get ready in earnest! What would her advent theme be this year, she wondered.

They’d had a frost mid-September, so she and Shirley, her last child at home, had put the garden to bed with the exception (maybe) of certain root vegetables. The garden and orchard had produced plentifully this past season, and the pantry shelves were filled with enough canned vegetables, fruit, and meat to see them through the winter. Just thinking of her well-stocked pantry gave Ina feelings of warm satisfaction.

While she could still see to move about the house, Ina performed all the little tasks that made their evening comfortable. She lit a little fire in the wood stove in the bedroom, just enough to take the chill off the room. She also built a fire in the fireplace and laid their nightwear on a chair in the kitchen to warm near the cookstove.

During the long dark evenings of fall / winter, Ina always looked forward to several hours of quiet evening reading, but this evening she was especially eager to tackle a fresh stack of already well-read magazines and papers sent over by a neighbor. Once her household had perused them, Ina would pass them along to the next household, adding to the stack any magazines and newspapers that had come to them from other sources. And that was how they did.

She stoked the fire in the cookstove and retrieved a jar of leftover chicken soup from the ice house to warm for their supper. Plenty of meat and vegetables remained, but she would cook more noodles and add broth and seasonings. Why was it that leftover soup was always short on broth? KW

[We had our first frost in the Valley this morning. We have yet to light a fire in the little stove.]