Going Home...

I just got back from a whirlwind trip back to my home state. My best friend and I went together, along with our five little girls. Yes - that's right. There were seven females confined to one small space for ten hours straight. Twice. Giggles ensued.

The whole way down my friend and I solved the world's problems - discussing politics, religion, finances, healthcare, and (especially) parenting. I don't know why the UN can't seem to get it together. We pretty much had everything figured out before we even got to Kansas City, even while having to hand back kleenex and snacks at regular intervals. Maybe that's it - someone needs to bus up all the delegates and make them ride across country until they get to that mellow, silly stage that occurs about three hours in.

I don't know what it is about road trips that makes people so goofy. It's a bit like being drunk, I think, but with less risk for hangover. It helped, for us, that we shared common memories from way back then, and still have much in common today. Every mile we drove away from our homes took us a mile closer to home, so to speak. The drive there may have only taken ten hours, but we arrived twenty-five years younger and in a whole different world. It was, truly, a trip down memory lane.

Lee Ann and I are Okies from Muskogee. Merle Haggard crooned about being proud to come from a place with such inherent tradition, simplicity, and changelessness back in 1969, and I get it. Muskogee, Oklahoma wasn't buying into the gyrations that the rest of the United States was going through then, and it isn't today either. The store fronts may have changed, but the heart hasn't. Somehow time really does stand still in that small southern town, and even more so forty-miles to the south, in the even sleepier hamlet of Eufaula - our home town.

I've always found it strange that when I tell people I grew up in the South, they reply, "Oh, Oklahoma isn't really the south." Seriously? It's really hot, and people talk funny. Doesn't that qualify?  Granted, Oklahoma was Indian Territory during the Civil War (another common indicator of whether or not people consider a state 'southern' or not), but I went to Dixie Elementary, and our high school was called Jefferson Davis. See - southern to the core. Plus, anyone who's ever been there from here can attest - it is different. It's the South.

When I first got there, I was greedy for all the sights, and sounds, and memories this little town held for me. I saw places that I thought I had only dreamed, but now they stood before me in the thin, fall sunshine in all of their solid glory. They really were real! The experience was at once unnerving and comforting - a bit like finding your keys right where you just got done looking. You're glad to have them, but still somehow a bit perplexed. Each twist in the road and blooming flower triggered a new sensory overload. My brain was like a pinball machine - lighting up in dusty, forgotten corners. Experiences and memories welled to the surface, clawed their way to the front of the crowd, burst into the room - each singing and hollering excitedly at being validated and proven true. But, the best part was hearing the voices of my home town again.

 My cousin (whom I used to live next door to, and haven't seen in a quarter of a century) sat across the table from me and related a story about being surprised by something, and said she, "... 'bout fell out on the floor." My friend's dad greeted us with a grin as we pulled up in his driveway and apologized for not being able to "hug us around the neck" because he had "greazy hands". I got called darlin' and honey and sugar more times than I can count, and each one was like a lovely embrace. It felt good to hear 'fixin to' and 'ya'll' in regular conversation, and I could have spread those deep, smoothy, buttery accents  on a piece of homemade bread and eaten it for breakfast. I may have been only six when we left Oklahoma, but a southern drawl will always be a favorite lullaby to me.

But, all things must come to an end. Even in the midst of being comfortably enveloped by my own childhood, and even with as much as things really had stayed the same, I realized they were different. Or, more accurately, I was. Iowa is not Oklahoma. The North is not the South. There is a distinct difference - culturally, economically, socially. I treasure my memories from there and the way that it colored my personality. I love to tell the stories, hear the accents, hug the people, eat the food. I appreciate more than words can express that there is a place where I can go and step right back into my perfectly-preserved past, but I was also very glad to get back into the van and make the ten hour drive back to my future.

Having already solved the world's problems on the way down, Lee Ann and I let our exhausted brains have free-reign on the drive back, and got really silly. Somehow every road sign was comment-worthy, and every billboard was hilarious. Desperate to document the entirety of our trip, I took photos of the inside of the van, the tollbooth at the turnpike, and even of the girls doing jumping jacks at a rest area. (I told you we got silly.) Scattered amongst our giggles and snorts we processed our time in Oklahoma together. What had been good.  What had been surprising. What had been difficult. At one point, after hours of talking, a moment of silence settled over the vehicle, and we summed up our shared history and trip the same way  - we're glad we came from there.

We pulled into home just after suppertime and smiled as a gaggle of children poured out of the van to hug the two waiting daddies. The sights, sounds, and smells around me didn't arouse the same electric thrill of rediscovery as the ones in Oklahoma had, but familiarity sure feels good too. I hugged my husband, rushed my tired children into our waiting car, and waved goodbye to my friend - who was already engaged in doing all the same things herself. Going back to our shared childhood home together had been a wonderful trip, but coming back home was the best thing of all.

Family

We all grow up with the weight of history on us.  Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.  ~Shirley Abbott 

This week I went to the funeral of my first-cousin-once-removed. I didn't really know him well, and yet he was as familiar to me as my childhood blankie and the sound of my mother singing a lullaby -a constant in life that is both distant and ever-present at the same time. I guess you can say that family is like that. At least, it has been for me.

I grieve for today's generation, which doesn't know the comfortable embrace of extended relatives and relationships. My parents recently moved back to the small town where they grew up, fell in love, got married, and started a family. Though they had left the town before I was born, we visited at least half a dozen times per year throughout my childhood, often for a week or two each summer. Both of my grandmothers still live there, as do my parents' classmates, aunts, childhood friends, cousins, et cetera, ad infinitum, amen. I cannot tell you the name of the street that the school is on, where people go to hang out, or which neighborhood is the most affluent, but this place is in my blood - figuratively and literally. I know and am known in a way that is profound and eternal. In the Ollie Ollie Oxen Free of modern life, most people don't have a home base to go to in order to be safe. I'm glad I do.

So, there I was - surrounded by my family. In the laughter and noses and smiles of those around me I saw my grandfather, who has been dead for ten years. I heard the voice of my deceased great-uncle, whose legendary kindness and gentility were proven to be solid and true and factual by their very presence in his own children. I stood in the center of the room and the center of the generations and witnessed the past and the present and the future all sharing coleslaw and memories and genetics together. My children. My parents. My grandparents. The whispering voices of those long-departed relatives whose faces smiled up at me from the photo albums, whose life stories were being vigorously reported, sorted, and distorted. We were all there. I wanted to stand on the table, wave my hands in the air, and yell, "Hey! Everyone! Don't you get it? This is important. What we're doing here - what we are - it matters! It is everything!"

But, of course, I didn't. Partly, I didn't do so because every family needs a black sheep, and I am not anxious to move to the front of the line for that job. However, I also didn't do so because, while it's true that family is important and it matters and it's everything, it's also not true at all. Those same cousins and aunts and nephews have already gone back to their jobs and their lives, and nothing has changed. The fact that I am my grandfather's granddaughter doesn't mean a thing now that I have driven back to the home and job and town where no one knew him or all the wonder that his life encompassed. Even those who live together in that little community will cease, once again, to be family in any practical sense of the word, instead resuming their civic, societal, financial, and emotional relationships with one another.

So, there you have it. Family is at once everything and nothing, all rolled into one. I suppose that our genetic heritage and all of the other elements that make up who we are in a more philosophical / spiritual / emotional sense have similar roles. You cannot see your DNA, and probably don't often stop to think about it, but it defines you nonetheless. You are most aware of how much of it you share with others when you are in the presence of those with whom you share it most, and it makes you proud. I am forever my grandfather's granddaughter, and know that it is something special to be able to say that, even if no one else around me does. So, here's to family - including all the love handles, rogues, receding hairlines, dearly departed, and coleslaw that we share. Lowell - you will be missed, but your heritage, humor, love, gentility, et cetera, ad infinitum carry on, nonetheless. Amen.

Iowa

I am not a native-born Iowan. For those of you who are, likewise, not from the state, you probably do not understand what this means. To be a true Iowan, at the very least, your grandparents and parents must have grown up here, and you are most likely related to at least half the people in the county. During my elementary years, I used to marvel at how everybody in my class knew who you could pick on, and who you couldn't. Family duty required you to stick up for your first cousins, see, but once you got to the seconds and 'once-removeds' the lines got fuzzy. I was the only one who wasn't related to anybody, so I was fair game for everyone.

Fortunately, I married in to an old-time Iowa family from this neck of the woods (yes - that is the proper way to describe my general geographic area), so I have learned the joys of what it means to be any relation to... As in, "are you any relation to the Farriers who live in Brighton?" Yes. Yes I am, and it feels good. I can now catch the question before the words are even fired, while they are still being loaded and the eyebrow quizzically cocked.

As much as I do love this state, and all of the down-home, wonderful, traditional elements that it embodies, there is one thing I will always despise about the land between two rivers - the winters. Our average January temperature is a balmy 17 degrees Fahrenheit, usually coupled with a thirty-mile-per-hour wind and blinding snow. And here's the thing - that's exactly what the weather was like in December, and what it will continue to be like in February. Winter is not a season here. It is an endurance trial. The best we can hope for is good company, plenty of hot cocoa, and something to smile about. The first two are your responsibility, but I hope this list, compiled from various anonymous emails I've received throughout the years, will at least help you out with the last:

You Know You're An Iowan If:

• You design your kids' Halloween costumes to fit over a snowsuit
• You have more miles on your snow blower than your car
• Driving in winter is actually better than any other time of year, because at least the potholes are filled with snow
• You've ever gotten a snowshovel stuck on your roof
• You describe 0 degrees as 'a bit chilly'
• You've ever called in 'snowed in' to work
• You've ever gone to work when you should have called in 'snowed in'
• You consider drilling a hole through 18 inches of ice and sitting on a bucket in a blizzard a sport
• You're either as white as a sow's belly (winter) or you have a farmer's tan (summer)
• You've worn shorts and a parka at the same time
• You just stick your head out the window until the ice clears so you don't have to bother with your scraper each morning
• You've ever used your heater and your A/C in one day
• Your labor day picnic has ever been moved inside because of frost
• You own a separate vehicle just for winter
• You've driven a four-wheeler or snowmobile to work or school
• You don't stop golfing for the season until the snow is deep enough you can't find your ball
• Your New Year's resolution to exercise more means shoveling the neighbor's walk as well as your own
• Despite how hard the winters all, you still love this state and are proud to call it home

Community Theater!

I just got back from seeing the Washington Community Theater's Frankenstein. Very well done. Very artfully executed. Very chilling. Very community.

I know there is a certain element out there who would like to think of us in 'fly over country' as incapable of achieving the depths of either artistic expression or appreciation that big-city, coastal folks enjoy. After all, in a town like New York City or Los Angeles, isn't the idea of local, amateur community theater a misnomer? Isn't everyone who auditions there a semi-professional (or at least a professional wannabe)? Sure, such a pool of talent might make for a more polished performance, but what they make up in skill, they lack in another critical area of community theater - the community. And, know this, City Folks - when it comes to THAT area, we've got a corner on the market.

Take, for example, one of the leads in this play - Frankenstein's 'Monster'. (By the way, the preferred term these days is 'Creature'. I believe the ACLU assisted a group of Zombies - sorry, persons who are partially deceased - and their associates in a lawsuit, thus changing the acceptable terminology for most creatures of the nether realms.) Anyway, The Creature was played by the local band director. A veteran of the pit band, this was his first time on stage. Though it was challenging to see a beloved figure in the community 'kill' innocent characters, there wasn't even a hint of awkwardness to it. We felt compelled by our emotions, carried away by the scene, and not even remotely amused by the juxtaposition. It's hard for even veteran actors to pull of drama, and our band leader should be proud of himself.

Don't take me wrong - it's not that the performance was so commanding that we were able to forget who he was. It never escaped audience members that we were watching a bio-diesel plant employee, a proud new daddy, an insurance salesman, a pre-med student. In fact, in many ways that is what strengthened the illusion - made the ride all the more exciting. It is nothing phenomenal to have a professional or semi-professional actor be able to sweep us away into another land. That is no more spectacular of a feat than when my local propane truck driver fills my tank or when my mechanic fixes my car. In all of these cases, we rightfully expect a job well done by someone trained well trained and suited for the task at hand. This afternoon, however, we were truly treated to a show, not a performance. Those men and woman exhibited magic, not just skill. Now THAT'S community.

Tomorrow, they will go back to their daily lives. Frau Mueller (who was wonderful, by the way) will once again be swabbing and wiping, holding and fetching, saving lives and watching them fade as an O.R. nurse. Doctor Frankenstein's little brother, who was played by two different boys on different nights, (and Sunday night's William did a startlingly convincing death scene, by the way) will return to their respective elementary classrooms - perhaps as a bit of an outcast from the popular crowd, who probably won't fully appreciate the work they did or the emotions they evoked. The director will lay his script aside and instead lay a new retaining wall. The grave robber will hold the hand of someone's frightened grandmother at the local nursing home.

The sets have been struck. The party is over. The theater will be silent for another season. Our community has been made proud by our local celebrities, no matter what others with a less nuanced understanding of real skill might have thought. The standing ovation at the end of this afternoon's show was as genuine as the people who filled the theater - both on stage and in the audience.

And the Creature? Well, the leather lift boots are long gone, but I believe he walks taller than he did before. He has also shed his scary makeup, but will forever be viewed differently nonetheless. Well, with both a sincere love for his day job and an eye toward the June performance, he will ensure that the band plays on.