You Can't Go Home Again........

The title of this post comes from this song that has haunted me the last few years.

I guess I'm getting sentimental in my old age, but doesn't everybody?  Why?  Because the older you get, the more things change.  Change is good, overall, but sometimes it hurts.

Moving back to my other home, my heart fills every time I look around.  The red dirt, the bluffs, the trees, all these are familiar from my childhood and have not changed.  This makes me feel like I have indeed come home.  And yet, some things have changed, and while I know in my head that everything must, it breaks my heart.

My uncle Melvin and I recently took a trip to the cemetery to visit Nana's grave.  Once at the cemetery, we took our trip through town.  The town is Southwest City, Missouri, and Nana lived all the way through town right before the tri-state cornerstone.  She didn't live there her whole life, but that was the house all her grandchildren remember the best.  It was the house where we all came every Sunday for dinner.  It was the house where our parent's traveled to spend weekends when we were small.  I can remember waking up on the living room floor with all my cousins, where our parents had deposited us like so many burritos wrapped in our individual blankets.  

The house was down a winding road, and walking up to get the mail was a big trip for little legs to make.  I was never old enough to go, and sometimes my cousins got to ride the horse to get the mail.  I was never old enough for that either, and by the time I was old enough there wasn't a horse to ride.  Nana lived on a farm, and I can remember going with her milk the cow.  I would watch her pour off the cream, separate out the butter milk, and pour the milk over oatmeal for our breakfast.  Gathering eggs did not just mean from the chickens in the coop.  Nana had banties and guineas as well, which involved roaming the fields to find the eggs.  I wasn't old enough for that either, denied because I would step on the nests.  She had rabbits that she raised for meat, and geese that I don't know why she raised but remember as being very mean.  Nana always had bruises on her thighs from those geese, and I can remember seeing her reach out and wring their necks nonchalantly when they were headed for one of us little ones.

She sold the place years ago, and a family bought it but the house later burned.  In all these years we had looked in vain from the highway above trying to see what was left, but were always foiled by the leaves during the summer.

This time the leaves were gone, and we could see that nothing much remained.  My uncle Melvin pulled up the cattle guard at the top of the hill and asked me if I thought anyone would care if we drove down there.  I said I doubted it, but was secretly thrilled that he was going to do it, as I and my cousins had often hovered there too afraid to go on down for fear of trespassing.  We started the drive and I cannot tell you how it felt to once again travel down that winding gravel drive.  It truly did feel like coming home again. 

We drove slowly, commenting on the new barn that didn't used to be there and all the things that did used to be there but no longer were.  We were prepared for everything to be gone, but were surprised that the car port remained.

As the truck stopped right in front of the old carport, I said "How many hours have we all spent sitting right here drinking tea?" and the tears started flowing.  I got out, and through tear filled eyes, made my way across the cattle guard that I could remember being old enough to walk across for the very first time.  This was the cattle guard that my cousin Billy lost his play holster in and all us kids looked for it down there for years but never did find.  Funny the things you remember.  

We started just calling out memories.  How bad a driver Chief (Nana's second husband) was. How there used to be clothes lines strung between the posts. Nana had a dryer but did not prefer to use it.   How no one ever used the front door or porch even though it was on the front of the house.  The little wooden box with paper and pencil to leave a note and a clock to position on the front for when they had stopped by.  The spot where she butchered her chickens.  The old tractor seats welded onto posts with circular bottoms that she had instead of lawn chairs.  The hooks that had faithfully held the porch swing, still there but empty. The water tank for the horses that used to also be a home to goldfish.   The time Chief wanted to try Melvin's new motorcycle and ended up driving it straight into the trash barrel and crashing it. This turned the tears into laughter.  We have laughed about that for at least 25 years and probably will till we die.  Where the rabbit cages used to be.  We wiped tears and laughed and swore there never used to be a tree in a certain spot.  I looked at the hill where the hollyhocks used to grow and asked if it didn't used to be steeper.  Melvin said no, and I had to trust his memory more than my own.

This one was taken standing in the car port and looking East toward the highway.  In the summer the fence row up there is covered with honeysuckle.  The fence remains but all the gates made out of wagon wheels are all gone.  There used to be irises along the fence in front and no doubt they will bloom again this spring, perhaps unaware that they alone remain the same.  Whatever was left of the house has been cleaned up really well.  You would never know, could never fathom, the house that used to be there.  There was no cellar but there was a basement full of canned goodness from Nana's garden, shining like jewels when the sun hit them.  I could still see Chief in that field baling hay in the little square bales.  The tractor frequently broke down and how he could cuss when that happened!   It was more common to see him working on the tractor in that field than it was to see the bales rolling off like they were supposed to.  Something about twine and how you couldn't find parts anymore...........I guess that tractor was probably an antique even then.

These graduated cement blocks surrounded the outside of the shed on the back of the carport.  Rabbit cages used to line them on the yard side.  I remember being warned not to climb on them from my mother's fear that I would fall.  I did it anyway and did not fall, but never when my mother was there.  They seem much smaller now, with the lowest set being about shin high on me now.  That was the glory of Nana's.  We were often there together, us cousins, while our parents were gone or just inside and not paying attention.  I do not remember ever getting in trouble there, although we surely did.  I do remember a round picnic table, covered with contact paper, that my older cousins put me on once and spun me around until I threw up.  I was so sick I could hardly tell our parents that I had wanted them to do that to me.  It was even better than a merry-go-round!  What I remember is us getting called in to eat and myself making it as far as the screen door before I erped up everything that was in my stomach.  The adults asked what had happened and I told them but they interpreted my story as a mean trick the older boys had pulled on me.  It wasn't that way at all.  I asked for it.  I only remember my panic that my cousins would think I had sold them out and my mom almost getting me all the way into the bathroom before I could make it clear that it wasn't their fault.  That is the only time that I can remember anyone even coming close to getting in trouble at Nana's.

You can't go home again, I know.  And yet.  We were home.  We were together.  Nothing of this earth remains the same, but our memories make another kind of home.  As long as we are here together, nothing can ever take our memories.  I thank God that I have this time to be home, here, again.  With my family that I have been so far away from for so long, I will make new memories.  They will never overshadow my old ones, though.  This is hald of my foundation, my roots, and my future, all tied up together.  Nothing can ever take that away from any of us.  No fire, no rebuilding, no tornado, no storm.

Nana's legacy is us, not a house or a farm or even a carport where you might pull up only to find her in her underwear pulling clothes off the clothesline to put on.  In Lori's last days, she said to me "Let's go to Nana's", and I was surprised that she remembered.  She was a little miffed that I was surprised.  Lori said of course she remembered Nana's, because she was so welcoming and that being there was so relaxing.  All true, and I can only hope that each of us continues her tradition.  We are so very blessed to be part of this family, and need to do better to get together and remember her, and ourselves, the way we should.  We can not forget who we are, where we came from, or what is really important in life.  Nana runs through all of that, and all of us.  We will find our home in each other forever, and where ever location we might be in, a part of us will always be right there on that farm.  Sitting outside on the car port, drinking sweet tea, waiting for Nana to call us in to dinner.

Uncle John Leaves Browning........

The time has come for my Uncle John to have a sale.  The past few years have turned out to be the last that he will live in the house that he has occupied for the last 40 years or so.  He and my Aunt Linda raised two children here, 1 block away from my grandparent's house, across one of the two paved roads that runs through that sweet little one horse town.

This used to be the biggest joke in the world, as there was no law in Browning.....officially. ;)

Increasingly, he has needed help.  This has resulted in many trips back to what is left of my home town.  I have followed that familiar path to the lone remaining house that I have traveled to throughout my life that remains "the same" for me.  Gone is the house I grew up in, burned to the ground several years back.  Main street is virtually unrecognizable now from what it used to be.  I have made myself see it, stare at it, drive down it, make my mind accept it, but it always feels like a movie.  My eyes see what exists now but my mind and heart overshadow all that with what used to be, ghosts around every corner, cheerfully waving and welcoming me back. Coming home has changed in many ways, and yet there is still comfort and peace in it.  

I play a game with myself to see which song will play when I roll into town, my trusty box of Kleenex always standing by.  I cry a lot, but I don't worry about that here.  Here, anyone who see me either knows me, and understands exactly what is going on, or has no idea who I am and probably doesn't care what is going on.  The best time was to the accompaniment of The Bitch Is Back, ala Sir Elton, and it was the one time I laughed instead of cried.  Stone cold sober, as a matter of fact.  I see things that are no longer visible.  I drive by a tree that is no longer there and see a determined man patiently waiting out a rebellious child who has tried and failed to escape in the top of that tree.  He will have to come down some time.  The house across the street from it is gone now too, but once housed their family.  Later that house withstood a thunderstorm with a slightly crazy lady (when she didn't take her meds, at least) on the peak of the gable on the roof.  What she was shouting as the lightening flashed and the rain poured down no one could make out, but the fact that anybody heard her at all is testament to how loud she was, and I am here to testify that no one who saw that scene ever forgot it.   You would know none of this as you drive by now unless you were there.  Now it's just an empty corner, giving none of it's secrets away.

The last day I made that trip it was to meet my cousin and pack up a U-haul with what Uncle John would be taking to KC with him.  She had spent the last couple of days packing and tossing the (carefully packed and stored) accumulation of several lives "like a boss", as the marines would say, and assured me that "everything was under control".  Because she is my cousin, I understood this to mean that she had the determination and will to get through this heartbreaking and soul sucking process, as long as she didn't have to stop to think or God forbid reflect on any of it.  Which basically meant we were to get there pronto and keep moving and soon it would be over and we could all collapse.  Uncle John described it thus: "My God, she went through this house like a tornado.  I've never seen anything like it".  It was one of only a few times I failed to think he was exaggerating in my entire life.  I could see that was the God's honest truth with my own eyes.

Indeed, when we arrived the front lawn was already full of everything she and her 11 year old daughter could carry out, which was quite a lot.  We have 3 sixteen year old sons between the two of us, and they got the show right on the road.  Uncle John sat in his recliner throughout the morning as boys disassembled and carried out beds and furniture.  Any break in the carrying would find all the kids sprawled out in the living room floor, watching either a ballgame or a race with Uncle John.

It was actually exactly like it had always been in that house.

My cousin and I steadily worked our way through bedrooms and closets.  She pretended not to notice when I cried and I pretended that it was easy to finally get rid of the clothes that have hung in those closets, undisturbed, for almost 20 years.  I held those clothes to my face and inhaled, and then put them in bags for Goodwill.  May they be worn again by a good looking guy who will plays a guitar and can identify cars coming down the road at 50 yards.  I know the next guy will not be as sweet as the last person they belonged to, but men that sweet don't happen very often.  

We remembered the times that we girls would lock the boys out of the house as children but never remember to lock the windows, and how the boys would scare us when they snuck back in.  I don't think any of our parents EVER knew about that.

We crawled again into the "cubby holes" in the attic that we had played in as children (which seemed MUCH smaller now), discovering childhood treasures and what must surely now be "genuine antiques".  We sealed the house up for winter.  I took down all the sun catchers from the kitchen window where we always ate as kids.  That same window looked right down the road to our grandparent's house when we were little, and my cousin Jon and I used to get out the binoculars to watch each other when I was staying at Big Grandma's.  Between us was the paved road that separated Big Grandma's from Aunt Linda and Uncle John's houses, and the tree that we used to climb endlessly.  That road got oiled every summer, and Big Grandma made us put bread sacks over our feet to cross it, so we wouldn't track up either house with tar.  That tree's shade was where we learned to walk on stilts and shoot bb guns, our first target practice.

Standing in the driveway under that tree, while some of the other's searched the top of the garage for God only knew what, we found the trap shooter.  Is that even what they are called?  The things that sling the blue rocks into the sky so you can shoot them?  See?  THAT is how good Uncle John was as an uncle.  I don't even know what they are called for sure, but I can run one and I will have you know I can hit anything slung from them a very good percentage of the time.

It was always Uncle John that took us places.  He was definitely an adult to us kids, but he was the adult that also frequently got "in trouble" with our mothers, sometimes right along with us kids.  It was Uncle John that taught us to shoot, to bat, to fish, to ski, to drive, to canoe, to be brave when you got hurt bad, and to take your punishment when you made bad choices and everybody found out what you had done.  Of course, everybody would find out what you had done.  That was a fact of life for us.  Uncle John was the go-to guy when you wanted to go get ice cream for no reason at all.  He was always game.  The trick was to get him talked into going before either of our moms realized where we were going.  We were always going somewhere, and often they were so glad he was taking all of us that they didn't question us closely.  From our perspective, we knew there was always plenty of time to take our punishment when we got home around suppertime and got in trouble for him ruining our appetites.  That's the kind of uncle he always was, and remains so as far as his health will allow.

When I would bring him groceries or do his laundry these last few years, Uncle John was extremely grateful.  He always thanked me profusely, more than once.  And that bothered me.  How could  he not know how much I owed him?  

When I was 13 and had knee surgery for the first time, I got all whiny about not liking the food in the hospital.  He asked what sounded good when he called me on the phone from our hometown, an hour away.  I said Pizza Hut pizza sounded good, pepperoni.  I thought he was just being nice and talking me out of my bad mood.  An hour later he showed up at the hospital with Pizza Hut pizza. Pepperoni.   He made me feel like I mattered, and that he would go to the ends of the earth to make me happy, if it was within his power.

Exactly 10 years and a few months after that, I had my first baby.  Everyone came to the hospital, including Uncle John.  He asked me what sounded good after I got back to my room and with no hesitation whatsoever I ordered french fries and a hot fudge brownie sundae.  As always, he delivered within about 20 minutes.  I dread ever going through any big event without his funny, derring -do spirit.

Once when I was in my early 20's and alone in my parent's house when they were on vacation, someone tried to break in.  Well, they seemed to be trying to break in, crazy as that is in a small town.  They snuck all around the house and tried every door.  My legs were shaking I was so scared, because this just DID NOT happen in my town.  I got the gun that I was not even sure was loaded and guess who I called before I was going to (possibly) shoot someone?  Uncle John!!  He answered the phone, we made a plan, and he was there in about 3 minutes.  Up he pulled into the driveway, out the front door I came, and with our guns, stepping gingerly, investigated all the way around the house.  Twice!  Uncle John was just starting to accuse me of being crazy when we finally found a guy from the next town over peacefully passed out in his truck, snoring away.  He was not happy to be woken up by me sticking a rifle in his stomach and I do admit I did get a little carried away with the forcefulness of my wrath, but nobody died and he never made that particular mistake again as far as me or Uncle John ever heard.  I think he may have taken to drinking at home after that, which was probably for the best anyway.  To the best of my knowledge he didn't even come to my town again for many years. Apparently I told him not to, although I don't have a clear memory of anything I say or do when I get into such a state.  People were watching for him, believe me.  :D  It all worked out in the end.  We were that kind of town.

I looked around the front yard of that house, old memories laid over what my eyes were seeing now.  The curving sidewalk that seemed so long when I drove down it on a tricycle.  

Across the road to the left here is the field that the Montgomery boys used to cross when I babysat them (which was against the rules, not that they cared), calling me and laughing hysterically at their "escape", so they could play with Jon and Kristen, from Uncle John's house.  Good times.  Good times.

 Seriously I wouldn't have missed it for the world

The spot I was standing in the night my finger got knocked out of joint playing kickball.  Uncle John driving me and my mother to a Dr's (that might have been a vet, there was an argument and it was never determined what the truth of the situation was) where I was given many shots, wouldn't stop crying, and finally just buried my face in Uncle John's shoulder while he tried to straighten it out.  It was not straightened out, but has worked just fine, ever since.

How many times was Uncle John Mayor of this town?  How many cars did he sell or work on?  How many teams did he play ball on?

The pitcher's mound my cousin spent hours practicing on, pitching to Uncle John....how many hours?  How many years?  How could we leave that there????  Everything we did that seemed.....wrong, but was right.  It was the right thing to do.  We kept reassuring ourselves and each other about this.

I still think this should go with Kristen.

The picnic table we ate on every summer of our lives, where the boys figured out how to take the wings off flies and no one could help but laugh, even our mothers, when the flies would keep hopping up but never fly away.  Using the magnifying glass to burn ants on the front sidewalk..........and figuring out that we could start fires all by ourselves.

Aunt Linda joined an "album of the month" club and we listened to an eclectic mix of Meatloaf, Helen Reddy and Barry Manilow until we knew every song on every album by heart the summer I was 12. The other 3 would have been 8 or 9.  This never really served any of us very well, I might add, but does that matter now?  No!  THAT is how memories are made!

Finally everything was loaded.  The freezers were defrosted, the house was winterized, the thermostat turned down, everything locked.  It felt like the house was mourning, but it could have just been us.  It felt like we were abandoning a baby, or an old person, someone who thought they could trust you. Someone who should be able to trust you.  It felt like we were untrustworthy.  But we're not.  It's hard to explain, and I hope you never have to go through it.  However, the only way to avoid going through it would be not to get attached to a place, and that would hardly be any way to live at all.

As I loaded my car to leave I noticed that my cousin's kids had found the magnifying glass and were burning ants on the front sidewalk.  My poor cousin still had a 3 hour trip to make and all that stuff to unpack and arrange and was determined to do it that evening.  I knew it was time to leave so she could keep going.  Stopping now was not an option, not if she wanted to get through it without a nervous breakdown.  I left them burning the ants with the magnifying glass.  The song playing in my head was Twilight Time.  I have no explanation for that, and I blamed Big Grandma's influence as I smiled.  I frequently picture my grandparents and all their peers in heaven now, looking down and lending us strength.  

By 10 that evening I got a picture from my cousin.  Uncle John was settled in his new place.  It was over, except for the sale.  She could now collapse.  It was done.  She had made it.  I knew she would.  She comes from a long line of strength.

Uncle John in his new place.

Vacations: Worst is Best

It's been several years since I have taken a family vacation, and I may never to be able to afford to really take one again.  Instead of a big vacation these days, we have a lot more sleepovers and short trips to visit family.

This seems surreal to me because when I was a child we always took a vacation, even though we lived on a very modest income.  Most often we went to places where we had family to stay with, which meant spending hours and days in the car.  At the time I thought it was undoubtedly the most miserable times I would ever have in my life, and that turned out to be both true and not true, but the bigger point is that those memories have survived and become treasured, moreso for the misery they contained.

I remember it like it was yesterday.  My step father would drag out the Atlas and plan our route all winter long.  The morning vacation "started" meant that we would all get up around 3 in the morning, even earlier if we had to cross Kansas.  Living in Missouri, we often had to cross Kansas, and while I love many people in Kansas, I would rather slip into a coma than have to cross it during the day.  It's like the ocean, only without water.  Or trees.  Just endless prairie grasses to the horizon for days at a time.  Occasionally you will see a tree.  You will be able to see it for a very looooongggg time before you pass it.  It was like being in the twilight zone.  But I'm wandering again.  Enough of Kansas.

My brother and I would sleepwalk from our beds to the bed made for us in the backseat of our family car, and proceed to go straight back to sleep.  Only sound asleep would we ever share the backseat without fighting.  We would wake up hours later, never close to our destination, sadly,  but always ready to put up a good fight over our half of the backseat.  Every child who had only one sibling knows about the imaginary line.  There is actually nothing "imaginary" about this line.  It exists.  Your mother teaches you about it and once seen, it can never really be unseen again.  Parents may forget about it after their children turn into teenagers, but make no mistake, the imaginary line is real, and battles will be fought over it until someone leaves home, even after the children who see it are old enough to know how childish and really, beneath them it is.  Nevertheless, the imaginary line remains, and many cars have been stopped and punishments handed out over violating the sacred rule of the perfect half division of the imaginary line in the backseat.

Once, when my younger brother was about 8 he, brilliant strategist that he is, figured out a way to get his revenge without bringing the imaginary line into play.  Picture a trip to Colorado and New Mexico, an eight year old boy with a pretend plastic machine gun, and 3 other irritated people, two of whom are trying to read and one of whom is trying to drive, listening to the constant rolling of the plastic mechanism that makes a pretend plastic machine gun a gem to any 8 year old boy.  When he got in trouble for pulling the trigger and making us all want to scream, he simply turned it around and tooted it like a trumpet, to the tune of Rhinestone Cowboy, a big hit that summer.  Big enough to have been listened to on every station we could bring in, and to have already worn out it's welcome without it being tooted through a pretend plastic machine gun.  But you know what?  I can still remember the resigned look on my mother's face, and the way I intuited that instead of arguing on and on, she would wait him out.  He couldn't toot forever and he wasn't the only one with the patience to make a subtle but full blown assault.  Eventually he fell asleep.  And someone may have stepped on his pretend plastic machine gun........It may not surprise you to know that the boy grew up to be a soldier.  I know it wouldn't surprise you to know that I grew up to have 4 children, and a van that played movies!

The year we went to Galveston I was about 10.  It was the first time I had ever seen the ocean.  It was also the year that I got such a terrible sunburn that we spent a bunch of money on bottles of pop out of a machine at the motel for (glass) bottles of pop (remember that? Glass bottles of pop out of machines?) for no other reason than that I could lay on them, so burnt was I.  I always got hurt.  It's always been what I do.  Turned out the bottles hurt too much to lay on, or to have laid upon my back.  I also learned that jellyfish are much, much prettier in the water, and will sting you regardless of where they are.  Sigh..............

There was the year we visited my Papa in New Mexico and he thought I was old enough to drive a little scooter he called a Tote Goat.
"Just don't get out of the yard, see if you can handle it, " he said.  I was old enough to drive it.  I was not old enough to remember how to stop it, which is what caused me to shoot right out the driveway and down the blacktop road that he lived on, scared out of my mind and able to think of nothing but "Just try not to wreck!!!"  I managed not to wreck long enough to remember where the brake was and by the time I got pulled into a driveway a couple miles down the road, there my Papa was, on his motorcycle, coming after me.  Once he saw I was all right, he stopped and laughed until he cried, bent over at the waste with his hands on his knees, until I was ready to cry I was so embarrassed.  He said that was nonsense, I hadn't wrecked and was fine, and for a first lesson he thought it has been just fine.  My mom was PISSED at my Papa!  I did not get back on that scooter, something my mother and I agreed on, for once.  Oh, and that was the year I caught me arm on a barbed wire fence feeding a horse and had to get a tetanus shot.  Fun, fun, fun!  OK, not fun, but you have to admit, memorable.  What I would not give for footage of the look on my face, not to mention Papa's, when I shot out the driveway and down the road!

We had very memorable vacations.  I think everyone does, and let me tell you this: it matters not where you go, as long as you are together, even if you are miserable.  In fact, the more miserable you are, the more memorable it will be.  Just wait and see if I am not right. 

Every year we spent time at Nana's with all or at least most of our cousins around.  Heaven.  We did nothing more than walk up the lane to get the mail, or sit in the porch swing, drink tea and visit.  We ate constantly.  Nana should have probably run a Bed and Breakfast full time.  During my teenage years we all compared and discovered that we all gained an average 5 pounds per week, at Nana's.    This is probably why I rarely spent two weeks consecutively.  If I had it to do over, I would care less about the weight gain and write down every thing she ever said to me, especially the recipe's.  We never wanted to leave Nana's and I never did it without tears.

One year Nana's husband wanted to drive my uncle's new motor cycle.  It worked out just about exactly like my first time on a Tote Goat, but with the added hilarity of him running straight at the trash barrell, which went straight up and vomited a shower of ashes over him, my poor uncle, and the motorcycle.  The motorcycle and Nana's husband were both driven into the ground and covered with debris, several yards from each other.  My uncle, true to form, laughed until he cried, bent over at the waist with his hands on his knees.  It's how my family rolls.  To this day, when that memory is recalled my uncle still laughs until he cries.  We all do.  So the next time you do something really stupid that you KNOW no one is ever gong to forget, take heart:  You have added a memory that will live on through your family for what, at least for you and probably your children, will be the equivalent of "forever".  Don't be embarrassed.  That's how memories are made!

Eventually we would make grown up memories there together also, we would bring our babies and stay up all night talking and eating.  To this day, I get a certain yearning in the summer to be drinking a Rt. 44 Sonic drink in a car with a bunch of my cousins, at night, all the windows down, headed to see the Spook Light, headed to 43 bridge, headed anywhere in the warm night with the trees and the bluffs all around us, our feet stuck in running water over a rock bottom creek and confessing our hopes and fears to each other, safe with each other and never alone, no matter how dim the future may seem.  One year a bunch of us got drunk, a cardinal sin to Nana, who either knew through her psychic abilities or just forgot we were there and locked us out. I think our average age was 40 at the time, and if you've never dealt with Southern Baptists, I could not possibly explain what a sin this was. I laugh until I cry remembering my cousins trying to figure out how to break in without hurting anything and me waking up my best step mother ever, who was peacefully sleeping after taking care of her very active grandchildren that night, poor thing.  She took it well, as she takes everything.  Nana never know FOR SURE we were drinking, but we are sure she suspected because she said we had it coming if we weren't home by the time she went to bed and locked up for the night.  

I have been yearning a lot for these old times lately.  It's summer time, and just to get my own children together between working and school vacations is a pretty neat trick.  Add to that the fact that we are all in the same boat now, with our children and grandchildren, (grandchildren?  Is that really possible?  Yip.  Sure is.  We are OLD!)  and I think we are going to have to start an annual tradition where you have to show up or pay a fine.

Kidding again.

We are old enough to want to show up.  

It's the kids we have to put in the backseat only to do battle over the imaginary line that we have to convince.

At least we don't have to go through Kansas.....

What FB Means To Me....

I hear so many people gripe about Face book.  I have seen a few articles about how bad Face book is for relationships. People are always saying "I don't care what you had for dinner".   While all that may be very true, let us not throw the baby out with the bath water.  Face book can only be as bad for relationships as the people in them are bad.  Get real!  Take some responsibility!  And I may not care what you had for dinner, but I may like to see it so that I can get an idea of what I will fix for dinner.  At any rate, I have the power to control what I see and don't see, and CERTAINLY what I do and don't do.  Come to that, it's much easier to drop a person out of your life on Face book than it is in real life.  No "Face book made me do it" excuses will work here. 
Face book makes it possible to us to keep up with family and friends who are far away.  We can see pictures of their lives now.  Grandchildren, vacations, whatever they put on there.

Keeping in touch with people you grew up with whom you may NEVER see again in this life.

Examples of this:

One Saturday in January, 2011, I had decided to clean out the furnace room in my basement.  I came across an entire basket of old 8 cassette tapes.  I had the computer on and was on Face book.  Several of my friends were also cleaning and putting up songs that inspired them to HIT IT, and I was actually enjoying myself as much as was possible.  In the basket, I find a cassette tape of a band made up of several guys from my hometown. 

Flashback:  The scene is a bar in Milan Missouri, the time is approximately 2 am.  I am standing, visiting with the band, waiting to get out.  The bar tenders are yelling "OK PEOPLE!!  YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO HOME, BUT YOU CAN'T STAY HERE!!" and trying to get everyone out of the building.  Parking lot was perfectly fine, as I remember, and there might be a crowd there till the sun came up, but out of the building NOW was the general sense.  Suddenly I feel something slipped into my purse, which was as big as my hair in those days, and I turn around to see one of the members of the band with a sheepish smile on his face.  "Check that out when you get to your car, before you leave", he grinned.  I said OK and hurried out to see what my surprise was.  My surprise was a cassette that this band had made.  I was touched and thrilled, and I put it on straight away and listened to it all the way home.

It was listened to a lot for many years, had wound up in this basket of cassettes and had been waiting right here since April of 2001.  I acquired this tape in, are you ready??????

1987

 Now it is 24 years later.

The band member (name of this group was MEANSTREAK) had moved away years ago and I had never seen him again.  But guess who I had found and friended on Face book?

Now, normally, and by "normally" I am talking pre-Face book, this would have just been a nice little trip down memory lane.  That I would have shared with no one, probably, because the only people it would mean anything to were either dead or thousands of miles away.

I got right on his page, this old friend, and posted on his wall:

I'm cleaning out my furnace room in the basement and guess what I just found????????

(cautiously) What?

MEANSTREAK!!   LONER!!!!!

OMG!!!!  DOES IT STILL WORK??????

idk, but message me your address and I will send it to you!!  It's the one you gave me for free that night!!

Then followed a flurry of messages between us, with him providing his address, and saying how excited he would be for his son (his son, who I would have never even known existed without face book) to get to hear it, and how he had nothing left from those years, so naturally this meant a lot to him.  It still worked, too, so his son got to hear what his dad was up to all those years ago.  Totally worth it!

Still think it's a waste of time?

My father's family all hail from a small town in the very corner of Missouri named Southwest City.  It is right where OK, MO and AR all meet.  (Yes, they do.  Do not argue this point.  I can take you to the cornerstone, just look closely at the map).  It is about 40 minutes from Joplin and I have family and friends scattered throughout that area.  Both of my families cover most of this state. 

Last Sunday Joplin was hit with an EF4 tornado.  I got up from a nap ( A NAP!!!)  and the Weather Channel happened to be on as I walked into the living room, and under a banner that said BREAKING NEWS, they were reporting live from Joplin after a tornado.  The little weather channel guy was standing all by himself, sobbing and trying to keep his back to the camera. He couldn't speak.  The camera was trying to focus in on what he had just seen/heard that reduced him to helpless tears.  They seemed to be afraid there would be an explosion at St. John's Hospital (by far the most popular in Joplin, just sayin').  I was frozen in my living room trying to think what to do.  I grabbed my phone and immediately logged into Face book.

Without Face book, I would not have known, for days at least, whether my family and friends in that area were ok OR how bad the damage really was.  Without Face book, I would probably just have gotten into the car and headed down or sat, slowly losing my mind, by the phone, hoping that they had service in that area.  Or maybe I would have camped in front of the tv, trying to recognize faces.

Whatever you use it for, however much it gets on your nerves, as much as it can be abused, I have to come down on team Face book.  My world is better with it than without it.  A lot better.