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My grandparents, Michael and Clementine Drozdal came from Poland to western Massachusetts in 1899, purchasing an old wooden farmhouse that sprawled at the foot of Mount Holyoke, a stone’s throw from the Connecticut River. They started farming on the few acres of land that came with the property, grew sugar and butter corn, tobacco, string beans, peas, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and squash. Clementine, was pregnant most of the time. Fifteen years and six children later, my mother, Anastasia, the seventh child and fourth daughter arrived. My mother recalls the flower garden as well as the vegetable garden and remembers rising to do her chores and participate in the farming each morning in the sun-burnished fields. She grew up picking snapdragons and roses for her mother’s dining table. My grandfather, Michael, had three strong sons to assist with the care of a few cows and horses. A milking station was built and the barn, a big old shingled structure the color of stone ruins, was refurbished. The stalls smelled of manure; a slew of cats skittered out of rafters, up and down over the hay. Winters were cold but springs were fertile and the boys pulled squealing baby calves from their mothers’ bellies; they’d stand within minutes after entering the world. My grandfather was struggling to purchase lots in the adjacent areas one at a time for his expanding farm. One morning in the kitchen, warming herself by the big wood-burning oven, Stacia and her sister, Adeline, were peeling potatoes. Stacia was six years old and she didn’t know her father had been bidding on some acreage across the road. He was fifty when my mother was born and she found him distant and rigid, so it was unlikely that she would introduce her own two cents into any of his business transactions. There were twenty cows by now, mostly big brown-eyed heifers, but he had plans to buy those fields, add some black angus and another bull. That morning Grandpa was resigned to commit to a different land purchase compromising his intentions. Sitting beside my mother, smoking his pipe, he wore his stale-smelling denim uniform, overalls with a red checkered shirt underneath. At one moment, however, something moved my mother to jump up from her stool when a car turned into the driveway. She had no idea of her Dad’s dealings, and he was stunned by her uncharacteristic impertinence when she tore out the screendoor shouting at the people in the car as they pulled into the yard. “No! No!” Stacia hollered, “Get back in your car, my father won’t see you!” Breathing heavily, Michael trotted up, about to strike her on the rump as if she were one of the cows, when her mother tore out of the side lean-to where she had been trimming asparagus and grabbed at Stacia, pulling her protectively into the cage of her own arms. Surprised and angry, Grandpa glared at his wife. Two strangers, a couple, stepped out of their car and stood frozen on the pebbles and dry dirt of the driveway. On the porch, three chained mutts were barking ominously, straining at their collars. “Pop! Pop! STOP! Don’t buy their land!” Stacia hollered from behind her mother’s apron. “There’s another car coming in a few minutes, you need to wait for that car and that man!” Grandpa knew what his lineage of farming ancestors knew, that the land is eternal, the earth provides, and with good soil and fertilizer, crops are sustaining in hard times and good. But his preferred piece of property in the valley vicinity right across the road had escaped his reach when the bank refused his loan application. His quiet, youngest daughter never behaved so certain of herself, so astonishingly authoritative. Her mother was about to quietly admonish Stacia’s emotional outburst. Still, remote and formal as he was in his relationship with Stacia, there was a moment of trust that arose suddenly in her father, a gut feeling that ascended up his body from the very ground on which he stood. The man from the car rustled papers and handed Grandpa a pen, shaking his head at the child. Straining against her mother’s freckled arms, redheaded Stacia kept up her excited chant. “Noooo, Pop, Wait for the next car Pop, it’s coming right now!” She twisted her thin neck, tossed her braids and peered down the straightaway of Route 47. Michael hesitated, then handed the papers back to the man and said in his broken English, “I’m afraid your deal is off.” The stranger’s face reddened. “Ain’t gonna be another chance Ole’ Man. “ He shifted his eyes toward Stacia, frowning. Grandpa felt the little girl’s faith. He didn’t know how she knew what she knew, but the way she set her jaw and chin, and met his eyes with her own empowered look engendered in him a new curiosity in this child he had coldly ignored as just another one of his working brood. But he sensed his very core rooted to the land of his first choice, and a change of heart and mind overcame him. He shook his head at the stranger and spoke in his thick accent, “I am Sorry but I cannot purchase your lot.” The man yanked his wife’s hand, turning quickly toward his car. A few birds chirped overhead in the Maple. And just when the air stilled, Grandpa Michael heard the rush of another car a half mile or so away. The Vice President of the bank was approaching, having personally approved the loan for Grandpa’s desired property. A few minutes later he drove into the yard. Grandpa invited him into the kitchen where the scent of Adeline’s fresh coffee filled the room. The respective parties sat down and my mother’s father made the purchase he desired. One hundred acres of land partially shaded by the mountain. Land that would yield a prosperous income. Land that made all the difference in the family’s survival. Land that has proven profitable now for over eighty years. Though Stacia could never explain her compulsive behavior, her intuitive sensitivity to foresee the better possibility, she broke through her father’s austere wall that day. Stacia is 92 now and suffers from severe dementia. She often asks to go “home,” not to New York where she and my father raised my siblings and me, but to “the farm” we loved to visit each summer as kids. Often at dinnertime she asks for Pop, just as if she had seen him at his chores earlier in the day. Their psychic connection that morning established a very close relationship and helped the farm support her family for years to come.
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