Home: A Long Day's Journey into Nighttime

You may have wondered why I haven't been blogging for a few days.  This is it.  My office is piled full of boxes, papers, and books that I packed in Arizona and brought to Illinois.  I think it may take me a few days.  Or weeks.  I did finally find the cord to my printer this morning after a desperate, 24-hour search.  It was packed in a box between my toothpaste and chocolate chip cookies.  Logical, right?


When my younger son told me we'd have to switch the weekend of our trip from Arizona to Illinois, I knew no good could come of it.  After all, it was the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, and while we were not travelling by water, we were driving about 1800+ miles in two days.  This trip never goes the way I anticipate it will go.


My son had a prior commitment the following weekend when I had originally planned to make the trek.  And, better yet, this would put him in a prime position to say, "Of course Mom likes me best."  He would finish his stint driving with his aging parent so she could spend the other nine months back in her hometown.  However, his two siblings are now on the chopping block for the next trip.


We carefully set our plans to drive through the mountains of northern Arizona, through Show Low, and pick up the interstate going across New Mexico.  Alas, snow and sleet that weekend in the mountains meant we would have to go south through Tucson.  Really? It also dictated driving across that nation that is so huge it masquerades as a state--Texas.


We set out through Tucson and headed into the southwest corner of New Mexico.  Las Cruces gave way to El Paso, the city across from the Mexican town of Juarez.  Our rule:  No stopping, not for gunfire or bathrooms. However, we were stopped outside of El Paso by the border patrol, checking with drug dogs.  They asked if we were US citizens and then let us through.  I guess a 65-year-old with fading hair color is a "go."



We continued through southwest Texas, wind blowing, dust flying, and hardly a town in sight,  When we reached Odessa we had a moment of silence for the town of Friday Night Lights fame.  Then we

journeyed on through Midland, Big Spring, Sweetwater, and Abilene.  Our original plan was to go north through Amarillo, drive into Oklahoma, and spend the night in Oklahoma City.  By now, however, there were tornado warnings in Oklahoma and Kansas.  Really?  We stopped, after 891 miles, at Abilene.


The next morning we dragged our weary bodies out of bed and drove north through Wichita Falls and into Oklahoma.  I have to say there is very little in west Texas other than oil wells, scrap metal dumps, tumbleweeds, and, of course, high school football fields.  The minute we crossed the state border into Oklahoma all was green, softly blowing grass and trees.  It was almost as if Oklahoma had paid its water bill.


Wichita gave way to Emporia and then Kansas City.  Should we go across Missouri or head north?  Our trusty phones prophesied storms coming north through Missouri.  We opted to go through the northwest corner to Iowa and take route 34 from Osceola through Burlington and on into Illinois.

Here we were, driving down a two-lane Iowa road in the darkness while insects the size of bricks were hitting our windshield hard enough to make us jump.  My son asked, "Geez, what was that?"  I guess he didn't remember that part of the Midwest.

We drove 960 miles that day and as soon as we crossed into Iowa my sinuses and lungs knew they were home.  It may take me a week, however, to get my legs working again.  We parked my trusty Toyota in the garage after all of those 1800 miles, and I vowed to make an appointment to give her an oil change and tire rotation so she would be rewarded for her valiant effort.

To paraphrase one of my granddaughters, "Home, I've missed you so!"

A Sense of Place

I must admit I am a huge fan of the television series Friday Night Lights whose 63 episodes aired from 2006-2011.  It told the story of a high school football team—the Panthers—in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas.  Running for six seasons, FNL centered around a high school coach, Eric Taylor, his wife, Tami, and a group of football players whose various talents, decisions, and circumstances led them to a wider life beyond Dillon or a narrower life staying in the small town.  When it ended with the wonderful soundtrack by Delta Spirit called “Devil Knows You’re Dead,” I felt like I had lost a group of friends.  Why?  I am not drawn to football games or high school immaturity these days. 

After much thought, I believe the town, its culture and expectations, and the human relationships in FNL reminded me of “a sense of place.”  I understood and felt comfortable in that small town and with its characters—some with a huge sense of decency and selflessness, and others guided by narcissism and selfishness. It felt like a familiar place. 

A good book is like that too.  I reach the last page and hate to leave that place and time.

For Robert Frost a sense of place was New England with its birches, snow, pastures, and streams.  For William Faulkner, as well as Eudora Welty, it was the South with its brooding knowledge of the past.  John Steinbeck’s sense of place was the California arroyos and the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression.  For Nathanial Hawthorne the Salem area with its witches and dark forests provided a setting and sense of the familiar.

Sometimes I wonder if we haven’t lost—in this amazingly interconnected and digital world—a sense of place.  Some might call it a sense of “home.” 

I was reminded of that this morning as I read the local newspapers back in Illinois.  Often their stories remind me of how wonderful it is to be surrounded by the familiar.  A farmer is killed in a terrible accident and his neighbors organize to help bring in the crops.  Recognized names and places, local politics, even obituaries of familiar family names form an unconscious framework for my thoughts.  My reactions to stories are the product of forty-four years in the same area among familiar people, names, and events.

My own children grew up in a small Illinois town.  They have memories of their neighborhood with “back door neighbors,” pick up baseball games in the yard, walking to and from school, and weekend evenings at the roller rink.  When one of them drove his hot wheels off the neighbor’s porch thinking he was one of the Dukes of Hazzard, all the doors opened and everyone rushed to see what the noise was after he hit the sidewalk.  When another one rode her tricycle down the middle of the main street to go shopping downtown at age four, a local cab driver brought her back unharmed—fortunately it was to the next door neighbor’s house since I would have died of embarrassment at her escape.  Small towns. 

Recently I had a terrible accident in the small town I call home.  What was amazing was that I knew the firemen that came to my rescue, many of the nurses and doctors that cared for me in two different hospitals, and the friends who came to my home afterwards.  People provided food, rides to doctors' appointments, and simple company while I was healing. 

In my winter home I share the freeways with thousands of cars, stand in lines with total strangers, and live in a neighborhood with people I never see. 

A sense of place.  There is something to be said for that.