in the village

i arrived at my parents´place 5 days ago. i still have to deal with internet glitches (it works pretty well when it does work, but we´re having storms and stuff here these days; also: i need to get a cable for my computer - or an adaptor from canadian plug. for charging my camera too. ugh.)
and i didn´t feel jetlagged in the least. my sleeping patterns are still weird, but they were weird before, so. still, adaptation will take a while.

from saturday til monday we were in my grandma´s village, for the memorial service (six months since she died). i´d been away for 4 years, and things have changed a lot.

my parents hadn´t visited in 1 month, and my dad had to cut the grass from the path so we could walk up from the valley. then he spent the whole day cutting more grass in the yard and in the former veggie /crops garden.
 

this way, to my aunt´s house, passing by an abandoned household: you can see how that barn will collapse very soon.

my parents started the renovation 3 years or so ago. they insulated/repainted the house, fixed the roof, put in the new barn gate. on the inside, two rooms are basically redone and one is still in waiting. the house is still full of grandma´s old things, some of which are really ruined, and some of which my dad´s been hiding in various corners, to weather my mom´s cleaning urges.

so it´s a bit strange right now: all the drawers are full of old letters, old bits of fabric, herbs packed in old newspapers, dirty mismatched china, postcards, rusty nails, my old dolls, my dad´s collections of magazines, electricity bills et co. of course mum´s covered all the beds and chairs with stuff from my supposed ´wedding chest´. i don´t even know, it´s half charming half insulting, but what are you gonna do? my parents recount the scene with grandma crying last spring as they were changing her old rotting window frames with good solid insulating ones. there´s no way of preserving this THING properly. this world is already dead and we´re doing an intervention on the corpse.

just two minutes´walk away, though, my aunt´s house is still alive for now:

(ok, what exactly do you call this cake???)

the bread oven

i grew up between these two houses, so as long as there´s something still happening in any one of them, i´ll have a reason to come back. my aunt and uncle are like grandparents to me. of course i always have to eat when i go there! here´s lunch:

so my aunt was telling me about last year, the last time grandma came to visit the village (my family kept her in town for almost one year after she got more and more ill). she said grandma had sat on a chair in the yard, talking, in the same place/way i was sitting now. they took pictures together then, and here´s one of them:

(a picture of a picture; to me, it looks like an old painting - a sort of ethereal, atemporal quality)

sunday, after the church service and memorial dinner, i visited the cemetery with mom. it´s very close to our house, lovely and peaceful, the graves and crosses almost overgrown with grass and flowers.

and on our last day we took care of the back garden a bit. because it´s shadowy and humid, it´s developed all sorts of poisonous grass that needed to be cut. the fruit trees don´t look very healthy either, but dad says the pruning can be done in the fall...one of the oldest and biggest trees, a walnut, fell on the house two years ago, and the cut bits of its trunk have been there in the grass ever since. now i managed to convince my folks that a few of them could be recycled as outdoor table/chairs:

my mother, ready to receive any number of guests

my father, battling the wilderness

i hope this was completely relevant for you and your lives, and you enjoyed it greatly. talk to you!

c.