The Tick Tock of My Heart – Guest Post By Sandra Heska King for TOYS

Sandra’s Blog was one of the first ones I stumbled upon. She hopes to be a Deep See Diver, and I know that she has inspired me to dive deeper. Her words are like honey, and she always finds practical lessons in hidden places. This particular post particularly resonated with my heart. I love history, and this piece drips with it. If you are familiar with Sandra’s writing you know you’re in for a treat, if you’re not prepare to be dazzled.


Egg salad sandwiches. I’m pretty sure that’s what she served. And sweet gherkins in a glass pickle dish. We probably drank iced tea while seated knee-to-knee at the formica table right here, our backs to the window.

And pie. I suspect we had pie. Or heaping bowls of ice cream.

It was the first time he’d brought me to meet his parents—this couple with a Tow-Low in the drive, a Mercedes in the garage, and a John Deere in the barn.

She showed me her “museum” downstairs—farm implements and pictures and memorabilia and old calendars attached to the barnwood-covered wall.

The whole house ticked and tocked from an array of antique clocks that chimed every fifteen minutes upstairs and down.

In the evening we traveled back to the 1700s as we sat cross-legged on the living room floor. We turned pages of albums and scrapbooks and listened to stories of the past.

“Be careful of the bull,” she warned before we went up to the barn. So when pasture-grazing Bozo took a step towards us, I executed a speedy, though not-so-graceful, dive-and-roll under the electric fence. Dennis, who fed and bedded the resident bull (always named Bozo) when he lived at home, folded in laughter.

We were married six months later. That was more than forty years ago. I grew to love this house and its stories. And there seemed to be a place for everything with everything in its place. But she could hardly wait to move. I was broken-hearted when they finally sold it and built a house next to the creek on the south farm. She only got to live there for a year before she died.

I wonder what she’d think if she knew how God orchestrated a job opening for my husband. How our Georgia house sold on a whim. How we were able to buy the house back and build our own memories over the last twenty-three years.

How we sleep in their bedroom and how those sliding closet doors still stick. How my son grew up in Dennis’ childhood room, the room that’s become my writing place. How the cuckoo clock, though silent now, sits in the exact same spot. How I serve sweet gherkins in a glass dish.

Bozo is gone, and the barn collapsed, but the corn is almost waist high. I try to imagine my husband perched on the gray Ford tractor as he pulled the cultipacker through the field. He was only six, and his feet didn’t even reach the pedals.

I walk the perimeter of the yard and wonder about the old log cabin that used to sit on the site of the Great Lilac Massacre. I see rocks set deep against the fence in places where Elsie Dog used to dig and where she treed a woodchuck, where Rose Dog chased two balls and then flop down to rest.

“Hi! Welcome to the rabbit barn.” I refuse to erase my daughter’s pink-chalked words scribbled on black fiberboard. We once had thirty bunnies housed in cages in the little shed attached to the garage. There’s where the goat pen was, just outside that shed. We had a couple of LaManchas. I often had to fuss at Seeley who’d stand with her front feet tapping on the window of the back kitchen door.

There’s another shed on the east side where my father-in-law raised peafowl. We had chickens out there for a couple years. I miss them. As still-under-the-light-but-moved-out babies, they even returned to spend a night in our bathtub during a power outage.

Our pool is gone. I hear echoes of laughter and the splashing and remember quiet nights when I floated alone and gazed at the stars. Two giant pines crumpled it during the storm that took the barn. I smile big at the memory of my son as he demonstrated how to show a goat. Seeley bolted and ran around the yard with him backwards on her back until she finally skidded under the pool deck, and Jeremy tumbled to the ground.

When we first moved in, I announced they could bury me under the porch. I wasn’t moving again.

Ever.

Yet there are days I stomp frustrated feet at keeping up with a continuing-to-age-150-year-old farmhouse. Then I remember how we stepped into a whim and how fast God took over and carried us home.

This is where I’m supposed to be, but I know the day will come when I can no longer navigate the stairs. When the house becomes too big to care for. And mostly I dread it. Because the walls seep sacred, and the ground hums holy and the land pulsates with history.

And if I close my eyes, I can still hear time tick.

Won’t you join me on Fridays for a new series and linkup called, “Take Off Your Shoes, You’re On Holy Ground!” or TOYS? Each week a post will be shared about the significance of a place and you will be able to share as well!! Just 1) Write a post about how a place has ministered to you. 2) Add your post to the linkup. 3) Add the button to your post. 4)Visit and encourage your neighbors!

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