The Magic of Ordinary Days Read Online Free PDF

contraption I found out later was a cream separator. A propane tank sat on the ground below the back porch.
    In the room where I’d slept, the closets and dresser drawers were empty except for one pewter-framed photo of a plain-faced couple that could only be Ray’s parents. No other family photos and nothing of the brother who had been killed at Pearl Harbor. No jewelry boxes, family memorabilia, or books. Assuming I was going to remain in the same room as last night, I opened my case and unpacked my clothes. I set out my most treasured remembrances, starting with the last photo taken of my family together, intended for the church roster book. On the dresser, I placed the other belongings I’d chosen to bring with me: a small jewelry chest that had been Mother‘s, the waxed rose from Bea’s wedding bouquet, one book on ancient Egypt, and antique hatpins—my last birthday gift from Abby. Finally, I opened the gifts Abby and Bea had sent off with me. Inside the new handkerchiefs were two pairs of heirloom earrings—a pair of pearl drops and a pair of bead clusters on ear screws. These I set on the dresser top, too, although I wondered where now I would ever wear them.
    In the bunkroom, I found Ray’s bed made and only a clock, a Bible, and a calendar sitting on the nightstand. In the closet, his clothes sagged off wire hangers—only some clean work shirts, two white shirts, some slacks, and an overcoat. Off to one side I found the brown suit he had worn the day before. Shoved into the corner were the shoes. Only one tie and no jewelry. On top of his dresser, the hat and the cufflinks he’d worn to the station sat above a stack of closed bureau drawers. I touched the top drawer. Inside, among his personal belongings, must be clues as to who this man was.
    When we were girls, Abby used to keep a diary. She wrote in it every day, then she wrapped the book with rubber bands and hid it among her clothing in her drawers. I remembered how Bea had complained about it. She couldn’t understand why Abby would want to keep anything from us. But later, Bea started hiding letters from her pen pal in Canada, just as Abby had hidden her diary.
    Perhaps in these drawers, Ray kept old letters or yearbooks from high school. Perhaps photographs from his younger days. I wrapped my fingers around the drawer’s round knob and started to pull. It was so silent I thought I could hear something ticking inside, something like a clock, or maybe a bomb.
    I pulled my hand back. What was I doing? Now I stared at the dresser and admonished myself. Whatever these drawers held was private. Certainly I couldn’t have fallen this far.
    I walked away from the bunkroom and then carried one of the kitchen chairs out to the porch, where I placed it for good viewing. To one side of the barn was a fenced pen holding some hogs, on the other side a pasture for the dairy cows and draft horses. Occasionally a loose chicken squawked and fluttered out the barn doors. A tuxedo-clad magpie who landed on the back of a cow looked as out of place as I did sitting on the porch in one of my school dresses with matching belt and shoes. Soon my eyes began to sting. When I started picking up pebbles on the planks beneath me and flinging them out onto the dirt, without first realizing I was doing it, I stopped myself. Like the Scandinavians, surely I might go insane here, too.
    Just before noon, Ray returned carrying a pail of milk and handed over some eggs out of a basket. “Morning.” He glanced over at the clean kitchen and smiled. “How’re you?”
    â€œI should have gotten up with you.”
    â€œNo need.” He removed an old felt hat and set it on the table. “You got to have rest.”
    I wasn’t sure why he had returned. “Shall I make lunch?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t eat midday. Mostly, I’m far off. Unless I got work nearby, I can’t come back during the