July 6-12

We arrived home in Charleston after visiting home in the Dakotas.
We were so exhausted!

I wanted to buy a journal to have available to write whenever I wanted to during this trip. I forgot about that plan until the day before we left. And so, now our travels across the tristate area are memories. And so, perhaps I can capture a bit here. And so.

Largest in my memory are the rolling, green hills of South Dakota. Had I just blocked them from my mind or did I really not see them as a child? My God, they are breathtaking. There is land so far that the horizon welcomes it miles away from the dirt road you drive down. The rich green of the land makes you want to sink your feet into its surface and stand there for what could turn into days. The sun is bright and beams across acres of corn, black beans, soybeans, barley. The land is majestic.

But my goodness, time drags along slowly through all of those country towns. There is so much distance between this one and the next. Almost too much land to remember.

We drove through the Dakotas and Minnesota over the course of seven days. Our eyes devoured the landscape and our skin welcomed the sun. We saw people we've loved and cannot forget. I saw my cousins raising their own children. I remembered times they seemed so much older than me. I reminded myself how young they were back then. I held eight different babies and loved them all. I think about how those babies will not know me well, nor I them.

We ran through the grass on the farm where Dad grew up and we found his old, rusted blue car in the meadows. He laughs and tells us that workers at a drive-thru restaurant ticketed it as a "piece of shit". I ask him when that was and he tells me, 1979. This is the car he drove when he met my mother. It now rots away amidst the seeding grass and here we are touching a part of Dad's history. We are all looking over the horizon and the hills when Dad goes to the drivers' side of the door and tries to open it. It opens. He sits in the drivers' seat of the decrepit piece of shit and he puts his hands on the steering wheel. Then he sees a white, silk corsage in the window. He brings it out to show us. He thinks Mom gave it to him. Dad takes it with him and lovingly packs it in his suitcase. He will later give it to her.

Then we traversed across the states to where my brothers and I grew up. We toured through the old house we were reared in, walked the land where I played dress up, t-ball, and built forts. Our sandbox is now gone, replaced by cement benches beneath the oak tree. The raspberry bushes were overgrown and died years ago. The backroad is hardly visible under the grassy overlay. But still, it is so much the same. The integrity and spirit of the place remain.

The neighbors no longer have their cows. The milking parlour is replaced with pottery. This is their new chosen profession. We buy some pieces to begin a collection.

We tour through Fargo, rest and sleep that night. We visit with one of my oldest friends over a beer (Matthew), a bourbon-ginger (me) and a Diet Coke (Shautay). We try to convince her to move south. She does not want to come. We ask her again.

There is a heart in the Midwest that is too big to talk about. Nobody greets you with a "How are ya?" but everybody treats you like a neighbor. (Food is ever present, nothing is too seasoned and the coffee is never in danger of being too strong.)

What this place has an abundance of is land.
What it thrives off of is its people.