It’s been a busy week. On Wednesday, my youngest sister arrived in north central Missouri, fresh off her New York bar exam. She was here for her last extended visit to the home place. On Thursday, my sisters and I hosted a fundraiser for Mom’s last state legislative campaign. On Saturday, the family threw a 60th birthday party for my parents (no fundraising in sight).
Saturday morning, the farm was abuzz with activity, but once the kids went down for naps, I went outside to commune with nature and the home place for a while. It was a perfect day for it; the wind was light and out of the west, so it was very quiet, and the temperature was about 80. Dad had used the brush-hog on the grass around the north pond, so it was an easy walk out to the dam.
From the far side of 30, the farm looks different. Some things really are different. The cattle lot is not only empty, but the fence is gone, the cracks overgrown with weeds. The straw barn has been demolished to make way for a hog barn (also empty now that corn prices are so high), and the haybarn, where we cuddled with newborn kittens on rainy March days, is now home to the combine and several pull-behind implements instead of hay. The white L-shaped house with a swing tree in its crook is now gray, with master suite in place of the tree.
But some of the change is in the eye of the beholder. I’m amazed by how small the north pond looks. That pond fills my memories of home. How many stories and Journal entries were written looking out my window, gazing over the water, as the sun melted into night? How many nights did I lay my pillow in the windowsill and go to sleep staring up at the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, and the North Star hanging above the cattails?
Another surprise is that the deadly hill on the back side of the dam, where we used to go sledding in the winter, is neither as steep nor as long as the hill on the side of my house in Columbia. It used to seem like a long trek out to the pond, yet I accomplished it in less than two minutes. (Although that could just be that we used to have to wade through neck-high grass.)
Sitting there in the poky grass remains, I gazed westward to the edge of the woods. The only sound was the pulsing of the locusts and other insects. I thought of other sounds that I haven’t heard since childhood, even on my visits home. The bullfrogs—where did they go? Why haven’t I heard them in any other body of water? I can still hear the laid-back grunting in my memory, but never in reality, not since leaving home. Likewise the “aa-ooooh” of the coyotes, which ceased sometime when I was in high school, even at the farm.
There’s a song that says, “Who says you can’t go home?” Well, you can. But it’s not the same. You live, you grow, you get wiser, you get dumber, you have kids, you discover new facets in your soul, and when you get back… you discover that it’s no longer the place you left behind.
Kathleen M. Basi 