My family moved to different towns and several states during my childhood. As a result, I don’t have sole location that I think of as “home.” The closest thing I have to a steady childhood “home” would be my grandparents’ farm.
My mother’s parents have lived on their property in southern Missouri since she was a child. My summer vacations were spent running down dirt lanes picking blackberries, chasing farm cats with my cousins, and spinning circles on the tire swing in the front yard. Evenings on the farm often found us on the back porch making homemade ice cream and shucking fresh-picked corn from the garden. To this day, when dusk falls and lightning bugs come out to play, I am transported back to when all of us kids would catch and display these “magic lights” inside of grandma’s mason jars.
Some things have changed since I was a kid. Ozarkland, the novelty store we would walk to with grandma for special treats, has been abandoned and demolished. The fields where we used to go four-wheeling are over-grown with weeds, and the hay barn where we played is no longer accessible by foot. The fields once farmed by my grandpa are now leased to a new generation of farmers carrying on the tradition, and the trailer where my great-grandma lived has been pulled down. The cousins I used to play with now have kids of their own. But despite the changes, visiting my grandparents’ farm still feels like coming home.
This past Memorial Day, we had a family reunion and party for my grandpa’s 80th birthday. I was full of joy at seeing my extended family in one of my favorite places in this world. But with that happiness came a lump in my throat, a tinge of sadness at the realization that these gatherings will not last. As much as I long for things to stay the same, I know that time, and change, marches on. Careers and families and re-locations have made it harder and harder for all of us to get together. And while I am very fortunate to still have my grandparents, I know they will not live forever. I dread the day when they exist only in my memories.
I do not know how many days or years I have left to come back to my “home” on the farm. I cherish every single one of them, knowing with every visit that it could be my last. I hold on to visions of glowing mason jars and melting ice cream and sunburnt shoulders and blackberry-stained lips as if they were gold. When I need a good laugh, I think about my cousins collapsing off of the broken picnic bench and falling onto one another in a pile of askance limbs and hysterical laughter. No matter how the farm may change or how many people leave us behind, I will always remember the feel of my grandmother’s hand in mine and the smell of my grandfather’s early-morning coffee wafting from the kitchen.
The farm may not look like much to an outsider. The house is frozen in time with wood-paneled kitchen walls and linoleum long since past the latest “fashion.” The outside facade of red wood siding and mortar and rocks has not changed since the house was built. Old photos hang on old walls. Knickknacks and mis-matched photo frames grace the surfaces of antique curio cabinets. And the beds in the guest rooms are the same ones my mom, aunts, and uncles slept on in their youth. But I guess that’s all a part of it’s charm.
To me, this is “home.” This is the place where I am from, and where I belong.
