Going Home

We don't get up to my grandparents much anymore.  Now that we live here on the farm, it seems hard to leave the in-laws for even a weekend.  It also seems mean to drag Jack away when he is gone so much.  Last weekend was fall break, and because Jack Dear was a working man and Harold and Rubilee were well and had other relatives visiting for a change, Bella and I stole off to the northeastern corner of the state.  Thirty minutes farther north and we would have been in Kansas, thirty minutes east and we would have been in Missouri, but just inside the state borders we stopped at the Wilson farm outside of Bluejacket, once a thriving town, now no more than a village.

I cannot tell you how much this old farm means to me.  I have always regarded it as my most permanent home, there with my dad's parents.  I have lived with them twice, once for a few months, once for a year.  Every holiday and summer vacation until marriage was spent there and even a few after Jack came along.  I have waded the creek in summers and picked pecans on its banks in the fall.  I learned to shoot  there, helped with firewood and butchering of livestock and soap making and gardening, have sewn with Grandma, pulled garden weeds, learned to drive a truck and later the tractor, built innumerable bonfires . . . And later in life, it is where I sat on a tree stump in the far meadow at dusk and contemplated the life that then seemed to be one spent alone and where I took lone walks down the pasture road questioning the meaning of a world where Aunt Margaret would not be.  It is the place of molding, of living deep, of roots.

As a child, I thought it was the most beautiful place ever.  The house was nicer than any other, the food better, the grass greener.  These eyes see the driveway isn't nearly as long as I thought, the tree that has gone through the barn roof, the sagging facia boards, the orchard gone a bit wild, the bathroom that distinctly smells of old age and illness.  Bella's eyes did not see these blemishes.  She still has the eyes of wonder and innocence.

Despite the air of age and neglect beginning to creep in around the edges of the farm, it is still full of life.  Bella  found row upon row of big hay bales to tame and a pyramid of small bales in the barn to scale.  She went to check cows across the creek with Grandpa in the mornings and with Grandma in the evenings.  Later I taught her to drive the four wheeler and we scouted the pecan trees only to find that this year there would be few to pick.  We loaded up a truck load of wood and got it stacked near the door.  Smart girls wear rubber boots when they cut wood - that way they can can go catch frogs in the creek on the way home.  I would have thought the frogs would have tucked in for their winter nap already, but the creek was full of minnows and frogs, one of which had to be a pet for a day and was relocated to the flower bed at the house.  That's okay - I am sure it joined the frogs in the pond just beyond the yard.

Bella laughing as she tamed the hay bales at dusk

It was a long weekend with no internet and almost no TV.  It was a short weekend of evenings of storytelling around the kitchen table, of exploring for Bell and remembering for me, of me saying, "that is where I . . ." or "when I was nine, . . ." It was a really just such a blessing to be there when they both felt good and when Bell could soak up some of their time without sharing it with the other cousins.  Every time I leave now it is with a full heart, full of gladness that I had one more visit yet heavy always knowing at their age, it might be the last. No matter that it was not a glamorous vacation, it was indeed most satisfying.