Gail Strock

The Boston Globe―August 1, 2025

 

My hand brushes the tail of our friendliest cat, Freddie Underfoot. True to his name, he performs figure-eights around my feet as I walk out to our barn.

I've been going "out to the barn" most of my life for various reasons. First, as a child on a farm where nearly every plant and animal served a food or fiber purpose. Then, on my husband's production dairy farm. Now, on the farm we bought 35 years ago with a barn that's retired just like us.

With little farm labor to do, I follow Freddie out to our barn. I tell myself I'm just checking on things, but I know how this walkabout will end.

 

On the lower level of this massive structure built generations ago in 1877, I survey the empty cow stable, horse stalls, and calf pens. In the upper level, Freddie greets me as I step into a dark, muted, almost reverent wide-open space. This area, generations ago, had hay stacked to the rafters and granaries full of oats and wheat. But for us, the top part of the barn was our sons' playground. To my right, a toy dump truck lies half-buried in a scattered hay bale. I imagine our boys being called in for lunch, abandoning the truck, and growing up in the meantime.

And this is where I knew my walkabout would end — me sitting steeped in nostalgia, glad for a good life, pondering the impressions left by past generations, and curious about the next. New owners will one day repurpose this old barn. For me, though, only one question remains, a question each of us must consider at any age or stage: Am I leaving it better for the next generation? I hope so.

Gail Strock writes and edits from her farm in Belleville, Pa.

My father runs his fingers across the wood plate he's sanding. He holds it toward me, eyes sparkling.

"Is that ever smooth. Feel that."

I lean forward and feel. He's 91 years old and has Alzheimer's, so I return his expression ― eyebrows raised, smile genuine — and say, "That is smooth!"

All his life, my father had worked with his hands farming fields, laying stone walls, building furniture, and raising a family. When Alzheimer's and age robbed him of this, he became bored. So I searched for what he could do — sand. Now, we sit nearly knee to knee in his cluttered workshop, where I hold onto tightly to a wood plate I'm sanding and any lucid connections to the father I once knew.

"And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything as you like it, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose, and it's always daisy-time."

―D.H. Lawrence

 

1979

My husband-to-be and I noticed each other on Penn State's Ag Hill. At a piano just inside my dorm's side entrance, I played while he sang good, old-fashioned sing-along songs, including A Daisy a Day. "...I'll love you until, the rivers run still, and the four winds we know blow away."

 

1981-2014

Our family grew, and so did the times we never questioned my husband's dedication to us.

 

2015

Cancer. My husband's kidney cancer diagnosis became our sole focus. One evening, I found a CD on the table with a note that said, "Let's dance." So we did. For three minutes each evening, in reprieve, we breathed deeply, held each other close, and moved to the sound of a love song. We slow danced each night for a week, then once a week, then when we'd remember and make an effort. As his health improved, we began to count new blessings, make new memories, dance to new songs, and give each other a daisy a day.