Artist: Merill Comeau Title of Installation: Black and Blue Essay (as seen on the floor cloth in installation) Title: The Farm photo credit: Will Howcroft Photography The painted floors were cool under our feet no matter the season. Smooth, pale green borders surrounded central scratched black patches we were told had once hidden under area rugs. In the corner of each of the three parlors were free standing Franklin stoves with scroll feet sitting on metal pans. “Modern, more efficient for heating” my father explained. When my parents purchased the house the only furniture was a large dining room table with matching chairs. At the head, under the table skirt, a wooden button was electrically wired to a buzzer on the kitchen wall. My parents, eager to furnish the surfeit of rooms, bought the contents of the house down the road. The owners had been childless, the wife once an opera singer, and both had recently died. They must have loved rockers because a pile arrived in the back of my father’s station wagon. One was made of back bruising turned wood. Another, diminutive, had an upholstered seat retaining the memory of the singer’s fanny. Our favorite was massive, covered in scratchy plaid fabric, and could comfortably fit three of us at once. Later on, when we were teenagers and holding a seé ance, my uncle tied a thread to it, pulling it at a crucial moment and causing us to scream in the dark. The kitchen had a hand pump set into the double cast iron sink on legs. Although it took some time to get it going, with effort it would gush frigid water, even in mid August. The enormous black cook stove sat silent most of the year. It came to life on snowy January weekends. We would arrive late in the cold dark and immediately fill it with dry tinder pulled from an enormous pile in the attached woodshed. Someone, years ago, took pride in being amply prepared. Once lit, we would set pots of snow on top to melt into water to prime the pump. The well never froze solid. The room would soon warm and our foggy breath would disappear. I shared a bedroom with my oldest sister. First born, she was burdened with sibling rivalry and though the room was large she resented cohabitating. We bunked together in a high antique bed. The arched headboard was not topped with expected carved roses; we were confounded by its single, polka dotted egg. The stiff mattress of horsehair woke us from sleep with tiny pricks from coarse pelage. Our bedroom’s windows faced the long, straight dirt driveway with grass growing sporadically down its middle. We could spy the arrival of guests through sweeps of leaves; our view screened by enormous maple trees planted a hundred years ago which had grown much too close to the house. During storms their limbs banged our walls once crashing through glass panes and spraying shards. Below our windows was a thickly painted front door, beside it a clear glass knob that when pulled mechanically jiggled a tinny bell. To annoy us our brothers would stand on the front porch ringing for us until we answered.
Children ruled in the attic. Our parents rarely ventured up the stairs hidden behind a door in the second floor bathroom. Three sloped ceilinged rooms, windowed with decrepit sheer curtains, remained dusty and mysterious: a child sized home within a home. Dispersed in the eaves we found little china cats of various breeds, a collection from a previous young inhabitant. Upon discovery, I stood frozen feeling the presence of a long gone child much like me. She flared up in my imagination and then subsided as my sisters fought over who could keep which cat. Chafing at domesticity and fulfilling taunts of “tomboy” I found escape in the cavernous, dusky, animal scented barn. Stalls filled with tools of unrecognizable utility provided private retreats. The hayloft was piled with disintegrating bales, tidbits of which rained down through wide boards onto heads below. Though against the rules, my oldest brother and I climbed to the uppermost loft via a rickety, unsecured ladder. This internal “tree house” was set high into the peak, an open platform that lacked any semblance of safety. Ropey and impulsive, my brother would dangle, clutching the edge, daring a death drop. Even the keen perception of life’s fragility did not deter him from trying this again and again. Love of place extended beyond the built environment through the surrounding hundred acres of farmland left to go to seed and reclaimed by trees. Behind the barn, through high unruly grass, two barely discernable ruts of an old farming road led up through a young, dense wood. At the crown of a rounded hill a brook erupted and began it’s descent from rock to rock. Endless leafy shade encouraged a forest floor littered with magically colored mushrooms after rains in the fall. In summer, spongy moss lit by full moons allowed us to run wild and barefoot at night. The lower, bushy meadows were dense with blueberries, wildflowers, and crickets. Grasping blackberry canes and tendrilous grape vines snaked along tumbling stonewalls. An abandoned dumping ground sprouted dirt filled bottles of long gone elixirs. Too far from the house to hear a censorious parent call, an impossibly tall pine stood. Stubs of broken branches allowed scaling up into green boughs. Gently rocking, resin sticky branches provided a comfortable, private perch that reduced the realities on the ground to far, far away. As children we lost ourselves into what seemed an infinite landscape. We padded silently through spare, airy rooms finding corners for reading in rare quietude. We snuck stealthily through the shadowy barn of possibilities, our pupils widened, adjusted to gloom. Our freedom at the farm belied a family chokehold. We were loosened from a secret, inward, congested atmosphere, a miasma of unpredictable tempers and capricious whims fabricated from a scarcity of love to go around. The farm was the antidote to toxicity. Intrinsically tied to a past I would rather disavow and forget, I am haunted by my desire for the acute, healing pleasure of cool painted floors under my pitch stained feet.