Grandfather's Pyramid of Time

Margaret sat on the screened porch, watching the summer storm approach. At seventy-eight, she had learned to read the sky the way her grandfather had taught her sixty years ago on his farm in Iowa. The lightning flashed, and she smiled, remembering old Buster—the magnificent Hereford bull who'd been Grandpa's pride and joy.

"That bull has more sense than most people," Grandpa used to say, leaning against the fence near the pond they called 'the pool.' It wasn't much of a swimming hole, but on hot July days, Margaret and her cousins would jump in while the bull watched lazily from the shade, his massive frame somehow gentle despite those imposing horns.

She touched her white hair, now thin and fine, so different from the thick brown braids her grandmother would plait on the porch each morning. 'Your hair is your crown,' Grandma would say, 'but wisdom is your true jewel.'

Margaret's grandson had visited yesterday, bringing his own children. They'd marveled at the old photograph albums, asking about the ancient-looking structure in the background of one picture. 'That's the hay pyramid,' she'd explained. 'Your great-great-grandfather built it that way so the hay could dry properly. Sometimes he'd let us climb to the top, where we could see the whole farm.'

The storm broke then, rain drumming on the metal roof just as it had on the barn roof all those years ago. Lightning illuminated the yard, and for a moment, she could almost smell the hay, hear the low chuckle of the bull, feel her grandmother's hands in her hair.

Some moments stack up like that, she thought—tiny pyramids of memory that support you through the years. The storm passed quickly, leaving that clean, washed-again smell that comes after summer rain. Margaret closed her eyes, grateful for it all: the storms and the stillness, the lives layered one upon another like stones in a pyramid, the lightning that strikes only to clear the air for what comes next.