Still Going Home

Thursday Mary and I made the five hour drive down to Tipton, Iowa, to see my mom, Susan, and Savannah, and to pick up Calvin after his stay there.

Usually Bill drives and I d.j. and peruse highly intellectual literature like the Pottery Barn catalog. Without Bill, and with Mary plugged in to a video, my thoughts wandered to all the years of making this drive.

Eagan to Rochester to Stewartville to Spring Valley to Lime Springs to New Hampton to Denver and Waverly to Waterloo then on to Cedar Rapids. . . and all my favorite farms in-between.

My grandparents farm was on highway 63 between the Lime Springs turn off and Davis Corners. I remember the first time I made the drive as a grown-up, in Bill's car all by myself, the day after our engagement, after living in Texas for 11 years and pulling up the long drive and running from the car to show my grandma my ring. Here comes the holy flood of memories of my two-week visits there each summer growing up.

Now the old white house is painted brown and someone else's name is carved very permanently into an enormous boulder at the drive. The barn still stands and the 10,000 trees are still growing. It's all good because the new family put their own love into it. And brown was an except-able color in Hope's eyes. I'm quite certain if I had pulled in the drive and wandered behind the new brown siding to the north side there would be a mass of ferns still growing, because there is no getting rid of those ferns. Which is a good thing. They grow into the foundation of the building and our lives.

As you know they are also growing all over the three-quarters of an acre that I call home. It's customary to name the farm by the acre--you know--the old 80--the new 80.  So Bill and I live on the three-quarter. With the ferns and the peonies salvaged from their rightful place lining the long sunny and wind-whipped lane, where Hope would ride her three-wheeled bicycle up to get the mail every day at 2:35 p.m. unless Gene Warnky was late.

Then on to Denver and Waverly--past the old four square where my cousins were raised. Here we played for hours in the barns, and made up a million stories all of which ended in some injury--such as Emily stepping on a nail. We ate summer peaches cut into little squares with powered sugar over homemade ice-cream-that healed all wounds. That house was something else--cold in the winter--hot in the summer--bugs here and there--woodwork that would cost a fortune in the cities. Memories you couldn't pay enough for.

Fast forward and Bill and I are parked in the dark parking lot of the People's Appliance Shop in Waterloo calming a fussy baby Calvin. This will add a half hour to the trip. . .

More recently--Mary throwing up and she often does--during the last half hour of the drive--and my dad taking the whole dang car chair out behind the shop and farm hosing it down. They get some good water pressure from these wells around here. I never would have thought of that.

These are the thoughts of road trips and coming home.

And here we are--the kids securing their own sacred moments--Calvin is off to the farmer's market with my mom--it's her birthday. And I caught a glimpse of Mary outside swinging on the baby swing. . . singing to the dogs.

I'd like to wonder what Calvin and Mary's kids will remember--will it be the three-quarter or maybe memories at Little Pines--the proposed name for the new/old cabin? God willing all the sacred places will overlap--and they too will have plenty of chances and plenty of road trips to remember.

I'm gonna go dig up some plants from Janel's garden. I've got water lilies from Eagle's Wings and Susan has seedlings from Little Pines. Today it's only lamb's ears and butterfly weed and some other plant I don't know the name. This is some crazy way I force my sacred places to co-mingle.  That way even when I going home--I'm still going home. . .