What captivated me as that child?
A young girl, herself, Christina, with brown hair, sitting far from her farmhouse, looking at its dilapidated condition.
It’s palpable.
You see sadness, desperation, resignation, poverty, a stifled limitation in her life.
It’s barren.
There are five buildings: a farmhouse, and barns or sheds making up the rest.
You don’t see her face. She is away from the viewer. You see her dark brown hair, tied back, with wisps gently blowing in the breeze.
She wears a simple pink dress. She props herself with her arms, reclining into the yellow field.
It’s desolate. Lonely.
Part of what resonated for me as the child was the farm.
I was a farm girl.
I know what small -town, rural life looks and feels like.
Lonely. Barren. Limited.
That was my experience. I have spent my life reconciling, attempting to heal from, and moving on from it.
Results are… well, not fully in, as to how successfully I have accomplished that feat.
At the time of my late mother’s stroke, sixteen years ago, I was confronted by overwhelming dilapidation.
Of my mother.
Of that farm I grew up on.
A “socially isolated widow,” as described within her hospital report, she embodied the desolation. The isolation. The loneliness. The barrenness.
Prior to the stroke that forever changed her life, she could not continue with the upkeep of the farm.
