An empty store at the end of the road

It was one of those days that we had driven for hours down backroads and dirt roads in a big old blue Oldsmobile. I don't know where we were exactly. Dust covered the side of the car. We were hungry. This was maybe thirty five years ago when there were still rural stores few and far between, where you could find a bag of chips and a Pepsi in the middle of nowhere.

After driving for hours we found ourselves at the end of a road. There was a field and a church, a small general store and a river. The colour of the place was sage green. I remember that. The grass had faded with the changing season. I could hear the sound of children yelling in the distance. It was not a deserted place but it was a lonely place.

The white church was locked up. I stood on tip toes and looked in the window. Rows of brown pews sat empty. I walked over to the general store and it too was nearly empty. It had pale yellow wooden shelves, some chips and bars and a few shelves of sundry items. There was a bottle of castor oil there for twenty five cents. It must have been there for ten years, maybe longer. Behind the counter a petite grey haired woman stood in an apron over a cardigan sweater and a dress. She was quiet and still and looked closely at us. Her grey hair was cut short and permed. 

I can still see her standing there behind the counter, like a portrait. I wonder now as I did then if the store had once thrived. She was old and near the end of her working life, but still she was open for a little snack at the end of the road.

As I walked down the spruce lined path this morning, I thought about her. She was in her late seventies then so she has likely been dead a good while now, but remains indelible in my memory. I come back to that day often and wonder - where was I, who was she? I remember her at the end of her career standing there holding on to a thin thread of belonging. She was not ready to give up the business. It was less lonely to be in an empty store in the middle of nowhere with only the occasional traveller to drop in than it was to bar the door.

Why exactly I think of her, I do not know. It was so long ago and feels so far away that I cannot even remember a word that was spoken. I did buy the castor oil and it remained in my bathroom cupboard, an unopened knick-knack for years and years. A reminder of loneliness, of changing times, of the tides shifting. And this is memory. Vignettes from long ago that resemble a dream as much as they do reality. Pictures in your mind that illuminate a quiet walk. Arising from nowhere but perhaps reminding you or leading you somewhere.

In my studio I have a painting by the Atlantic Canadian artist Steven Rhude that is a tribute to Alex Colville. Inside two buoys is Colville's image of the horse running towards the train. I often ponder this painting. 

We can run towards change, fly in the face of it. We can hang onto something with a golden thread, or we can make way. And I think seeing that woman, so small and so stoic, has always stayed with me because she seemed to be trying to hold fast in the face of change. At least this is the story I have made up for her. And of course this story is the reason I carry this memory. She moved me. She made me consider.  And she has stayed with me.

I can only guess at why somethings are printed like photographs on your brain and others just slide away, like ink disappearing in water. But some stay to later emerge for reasons beyond my full understanding and I pore through them like old snapshots found in a cardboard box. I look them over each time like they are new again and I find the story in them that matters to me.