Tag
Helen
7 entries
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Friday, January 1, 1982 · Don Krumpos
The Keeping of Things
We had horses my whole childhood. That was one of the facts of the farmstead, as natural to me then as the barn, the garden, the chickens, the machine shed, the old trees. Horses were not decoration. They were part…
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Friday, January 1, 1982 · Don Krumpos
The Salesmen at the Kitchen Table
Two salesmen came to our kitchen table when I was young. One sold my parents knowledge. The other sold them death. That sounds too dramatic, maybe, but that is how it arranges itself in memory now. Both visits happened early,…
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Saturday, January 1, 1983 · Don Krumpos
A Consummate Maker
The little projects with my dad were not so little. At least they were large in my heart. When I look back, some of the deepest intimacies we shared did not happen through long conversations or dramatic father-son moments, but…
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Sunday, January 1, 1984 · Don Krumpos
That Was Our Land
Every year our parents gave us new boundaries. At five and six we could only go to the end of the driveway. The next year we could go out onto the road, but only in front of the driveway, to…
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Thursday, January 1, 1987 · Don Krumpos
Tea on the Back Porch
I could tell my father loved my mother dearly. Not because he said it often. Not because they were romantic in any dramatic way. They were not a movie kind of couple. Their love belonged to a different language: rural,…
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Friday, January 1, 1999 · Don Krumpos
The House That Held Him
My father, with my grandfather's help, put a full new central chimney into our farmhouse. That sentence seems almost unbelievable to me now. A chimney is not a shelf or a bench or a toy barn. It is not a…
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Thursday, April 9, 2015 · Don Krumpos
The Dash Between the Years
The last couple of days, Helen and I sat at Dad's house making a photo board. We spread everything out — shoeboxes, envelopes, loose prints — and just started sorting. That was the best kind of therapy. Not talking about…