SALLY SMITH

I used Maggie’s Maid yesterday.

I remember mother trundling along the trails in the middle of Fairclough Island dragging the ‘maid’ behind her. She filled it with sticks and downed branches, any treasure she found along the paths.

The ‘maid’ was a manure cart, twin handles, two large inflatable bicycle wheels, easy to drag; it could go anywhere.

My brother Ian watched mother one early morning (before the maid) wandering through the dappled sun streaming through the old oak trees picking up sticks; that summer he’d worked for Uncle Ben, remembered the manure cart in the barn and got one for mother.

His brother and sisters scoffed, twitted him a bit. And there was a real tussle getting it into the tin boat and across to the island; getting it out even more of a struggle — but the four of us kids managed.

Ian took her out to the back shed, found the bicycle pump, filled the tires and she was good to go.

Mother said later her first impressions weren’t great — lurchy, brown-gray in colour, an unfamiliar noise as it rolled across the bumpy ground — but when she pulled it (and it followed her willingly like a hungry old dog on a leash), she was hooked.

She carried everything in it — groceries, clean clothes, garden stuff, twigs and branches…

As her grandchildren came along, she’d put one or two of them in the cart and pull them around, too.

Now the maid is sitting in my back garden, tilted up against the fence; sometimes her wheels turn noiselessly and ghostly when there’s a wind blowing. In winter, she’s tipped on her front end beside the garden shed. The dog often spends time under the cavity sniffing around, barking, sniffing again — skunks maybe, small animals, cats.

Her working time is over for this spring/summer; I’ll need  her in the fall again. I see her as I look around the corner of the shed and instantly vivid pictures come back of mother trailing Maggie through the dappled sunlight in the middle of the island.