Going Home

"I love it out here." I say it every time we pull in the driveway. I open the door and take a deep breath. The memories come flooding back of my childhood and teen years.

I take a look around. The house, small pasture behind, the detached garage, the sheds and barn to the left, the area where the pigs used to be. We would raise pigs and take them to the fair to show and sell. There's the canal across the back. My brothers and sisters would swim in it but I never did. Too girly I guess. And then the silo. There's still an owl that stays at the top or in the tree behind the house. I love the silo, it's been empty ever since I've known it, but it's kind of funny that I've never climbed to the top, always afraid of heights.

Mom mentions she had been going through some things in the basement and found a box of my stuff. "Come down and take a look." We go down the familiar steps and to the left where the shelves are. Past my brothers' bedroom and the wood-burning stove. We didn't have a clothes dryer when I was young. After the clothes washed we hung them on lines that were strung across the north end of the basement. Now Mom has a dryer next to the washer. But in the summer she still hangs laundry on the line outside. The smell of the freshness of outside in the clothes was too intoxicating to do without.

I lift the flaps of the box, look inside, and let out a "squeal!".

"My skates!"

We'd go across the road down to the slough with snow shovels and clear the snow off as we skated, making paths around the weeds standing up through the ice. Groups of friends skating all around until it was almost too dark to see. The slough goes around, kind of half circle to the duck club a couple miles away.

My friend Denise's dad would flood the parking area of the rodeo grounds and we'd skate there also. Our little town had it's own rodeo every summer. Kids would chase chickens or little pigs around and if they caught one they could keep it. Others would ride sheep like the bull riders. Barrel racing, cow roping, all the fun stuff.

All too soon it's time to head back home. We climb into the truck and drive around the driveway past the big lawn, the garage, barn and silo. The road is still snowy and my mind's eye is still in nostalgia-land thinking about skating on the frozen slough.

I glance over at my ever too-young-still husband. He's always got that baby-face look. His attitude is always 'I've got some money in my pocket, the car keys in my hand, someplace to go!' He looks back at me. Uh-oh. That mischievous look in his eye, a little smile on his face and suddenly he's spinning do-nuts. The tail end of the truck ends up off the road and in the slough.

I climb out of the truck into the knee-hi water, with the baby cradled in my left arm, Jared's little hand tight in my right hand. I have to keep lifting him out of the water as I climb up the short slope to the road.

"Grrr!" My husband! He takes hold of my shoulders and gently shakes me, "Christine! Christine!" The look on his face is full of concern.

"Arrgh!! You big jerk! Will you ever grow up?!!"

As he gently shakes me again, "Christine. Christine," my eyes clear from nostalgia-land to reality, I see his look of total shock.

"Oh...sorry...some dreams are just so real," I mumble as I roll over into sleep again.