Montana — Now and Then
Met someone on Facebook whom I had known as a child in my hometown of Malta. It took me about three days to actually remember her, mostly through association with her maiden name, which I’m sure she included as an assist to memory.
Her mother had been my piano teacher in my youngish years, and her house only a block away from ours. She is a year or two younger than I, so we weren’t in the same classes in school. However, we had played together a few times, one memory of which I retain as I was so inept at what we were doing.
The house she lived in was made of wood, was old, with small rooms that were full of spookiness and mystery to me.
As soon as I remembered her, a series of memories/dreams of her house came flooding in that had apparently occurred in another lifetime of mine. Here they are:
On one side of the living room was a steep stairs leading up to a narrow landing where there was one door leading to a room on the right and one door leading to a room on the left. These were the two bedrooms in the house. Over time there would be a recurring image of one or the other of these bedrooms being mine, laying on a narrow iron bed and looking at the flowered wallpaper.
The strongest dream/memory is of being in the living room at night looking up the stairs to the landing. Suddenly there appeared a large, glowing figure of an apparent human with a head, two arms, two legs, and a torso. There was no detail at all. The figure looked as if a child had drawn it, but not a stick figure. I went into total shock and panic. The figure radiated both light and intelligence, and appeared to contemplate me for a few moments. It then began to descend the stairs. I fled, at least in consciousness, and there is no memory of what might have happened next.
The next seems as if it might be a continuation of the above; however, the figure hunting me was dark and almost invisible. Again I was in the living room at night when I suddenly felt, and barely saw, a figure that radiated ill will. I, as quietly as I was able, ran into the kitchen and, for lack of a better hiding place, forced myself into a small space between a wringer washer and a concrete double sink. I crouched down to be as invisible as possible, and prayed for my continued existence. End of scene.
In this present time when I was a child or young woman, the backyard of this house was largely bare and scrubby. There was a short line of low hedge slightly to the right of the back door.
Next scene: I was sitting on a three-cornered wood stool smack dab in the middle of where this hedge would be, churning butter in a small wood churn. I might have been a child, as the churn was not very large. The sense I had was that I was doing useful work as my mother needed the butter and expected a good outcome to my efforts. My present body retains the feelings in the muscles of what it is like to churn butter.
Last scene: Suddenly walking down a commercial street in the same small Montana town. The buildings to my right still exist. I was following a woman in a hobble skirt. We were walking on a wooden sidewalk. Looking at the woman’s highly impractical dress, I thought, “What a really stupid and ugly fashion. This woman must be crazy.” My second thought was, “At this time (late 19th century?), what would a woman on the Western frontier be doing in a skirt like that?” It was extremely unlikely and made me question if I was really there seeing this, although it all seemed completely real. End of scene.
Later: At the time I wasn’t aware there was a name for this ridiculous fashion. At some point, in this or that time, I saw a drawing in a magazine or a book (the publication had an appearance very much like a Godey’s Lady’s Book. This publication named this fashion the Hobble Skirt.