Winds of time

AUBURN, Maine — The problem with living a long life is that you lose people along the way, and when they leave, you are only left with powerful memories and their sentimental things that eventually become yours.

I am bringing this old windmill back to life. I wish I could do the same for my mother, Louise.

I am restoring it to honor a mother who meant to so much to her family.

I took the windmill back to Maine months after her death. It fell in disrepair and was rotting away in her cellar, and I was no longer around to repair it and place it on on their front lawn every spring.

Nobody wanted the dusty old thing, but I wanted to spare the windmill a fate from wasting away in the cellar. My mother and I both loved the bulky ornament. It wasn't anything fancy, but someone in her family made it, and that made it special to her. 

I am resurrecting this windmill out of love, and I wish I could do the same for Louise, who rests under manicured grass and shade provided by three healthy trees at Puritan Lawn Cemetery in Peabody, Mass.

She would love to see me give the neglected windmill a new lease on life. I would like to see her apart of my world again.

My father is not interested in woodworking and wanted no part of it as the windmill's three pieces sat in a remote corner of their damp cellar. So this wooden creation was left abandoned as spiders made a home out it and dampness ruined part of the wood.

She loved this unique lawn ornament because it was designed and built by her Uncle Ted Davis, a true gentleman from Pennsylvania. I only met him once, and I often thought of him as a kind man.

Every spring, she asked me to drag it out of the basement and drive the windmill's two stakes deep into the cold ground and station the wooden structure in the middle of the front lawn.

She was proud it and I was proud of Uncle Ted's design.

It was a tradition that lasted until I began attending college and my thoughts turned to textbooks, sports and girls. We both ended up forgetting about the windmill as life took its twists and turns and my parents became surrounded by loving grandchildren.

For some reason, the windmill wasn't that important to us until her death.

Last May, I packed up some of her treasures, and one of them was the windmill. I was numb as I rummaged through our dead parent's belongings for the first time. It was an unpleasant task and I felt like I as intruding on her personal life.

I didn't have much time to restore it last summer, and I kind of ignored it after carefully repairing one of its broken blades. But this year, my wife demanded that I get it ready for July 4th, and while the passing of time has not removed the nagging grief since her death, I began cleaning it and then painting it.

I painted the mid section a fire-engine red and applied white paint to the blades and the ladder that is attached to the structure with a hinge. I added a coat of blue to the sturdy base of the windmill, giving the restored ornament a "red, white, and blue" patriotic feeling to it.

I know Louise would approve of my work.

Over the years, I think it was overlooked as her four children were busy raising their children. I would see the windmill sitting in that lonely corner whenever I visited her in Revere.

So now the windmill has found a new home about 681 miles from where it originated - Waterford, Pennsylvania.

The 40-year-old windmill will sit in a flower bled in my manicured backyard and remind me of a woman who spent her youth wandering around her relatives' farms in the Keystone State during the Great Depression.