Homesick

I didn't really want to move, that hot July back in 1987.  For most of my life I had been whining about how boring things were in my little Indiana town.  Hobart, Indiana never seemed to have much going on as I was growing up, and even once I was married and out on my own, it still was not what I considered a happening place.  Of course, now, on the other side of 50 and heading downhill faster every day, I look back at Hobart and think,"Why didn't I appreciate that fabulous little place when I was living there?"  The answer, being, of course, that I was living there.  It's hard to really see a place clearly when you are living there.  You've seen the same things over and over again, dealt with the same people for so long, that you get a little numbed to how special it really is.

So I sort of clutched when my husband and I decided that it was time to move.  We were working for a church at the time, one that was heading in a direction we really didn't agree with.  When the pastor that had married us offered both of us jobs in the grade school at the church he was currently pastoring, we felt like it was something we were supposed to do and we took the jobs.  Then reality set in.  I was 25 years old and except for one ill-fated year at a college in Wisconsin, had never lived more than a mile from my family.  My in-laws were a short distance away as well.  Except for my friend Linda who had had the nerve to follow her husband down south for his job, leaving me when I needed her, all my friends were in Indiana.  And we had just taken jobs 1800 miles away.  In Cody, Wyoming, to be exact.  We packed up and moved on July 6th, in what I swear was the hottest July on record, with everything we owned jammed into a junky little pickup truck.  Did I mention it had no air conditioning?  And I was 8 weeks pregnant?

We moved to Cody, where we were welcomed and cared for as only a church can do for its newest and obviously pitiful members.  I cried for weeks.  I sent my parents a postcard with Garfield on the front and a message that said, "Greetings from the Edge of Nowhere."  The nearest mall was two hours away in Billings Montana, painful for a 1980's mall rat such as myself.  There was no place to shop but a Pamida, a K-mart, and what seemed to me to be very tiny grocery stores.  But over a few months I awoke to the awesome beauty of the place, the stubborn self-reliance of its people that was merely a thin veneer over some of the most kind and charitable hearts I had ever met.  I stopped needing to shop to keep myself busy.  I walked miles, breathing through a nose that was completely medication-free non-congested for the first time in years.  I fell in love with that little town, which at that time had a population lower than its elevation.  I felt as if I were home.

In those two years so many things happened.  Our first son was stillborn seven months after we arrived.  We were wrapped in arms of such love and caring that our pain was shared and eased by those who genuinely hurt for us.  Our second son was born, alive and healthy 11 months after that, and our friends rejoiced with us.  We were taken into more than one family circle and found friends that I miss to this day.

The population was down because of the oil situation, always an up and down proposition for the men and women who worked in it.  The school became more than the church could sustain and two years after we arrived, plans were made to close it.  We really had no skills that we could use at that time in Cody.  Reluctantly, we packed up our belongings and our four-month old son and headed back to Indiana.  I cried for weeks.  I looked around and longed for the mountains every day.   But my husband got a new job and I started nursing school.  Our son grew and thrived surrounded by his family.  When he was four, I graduated, my husband went back to school and eventually got other jobs, and although we had started off saying we would return to Cody when we could get jobs, we never did.  We've lived in another state, also surrounded by mountains of a different sort, and Cody became a beautiful memory.  "We lived near Yellowstone once for a couple of years," is how that incredible, emotion-filled two years gets described now.  But on my recent trip my kids and I spent three days in Cody, seeing some old friends and visiting that town that, thank God, is now growing and prospering, with a population higher than its elevation.  So many things have changed, but Heart Mountain, the mountain I looked at every day when I came out of the little trailer we lived in, still looks the same.  Our old home is gone, the church we worked at is now a food pantry, the restaurant I loved to eat at is a different one, the library I spend hours at is in a different location, and the pharmacy where I filled my prescriptions is now a clothing store.   But it still feels the same, it is still beautiful, and even years later, I still miss it.  Maybe it's because so many things happened to us in those two short years.  Maybe it's because now that I am older, I have started to appreciate the wonderful things that can be found in each place that I live.  We only lived there two years, and it's been 24 years since we left.  But I am still homesick.

The uninspired vacationer

Is the anticipation of a vacation more exciting than the vacation itself?  For months, I have been planning a huge vacation with my family.  My son is going to be moving out of the house and heading to Ohio to finish school in July, and he has put in his notice at his job to coincide with our last big vacation as a family.  Actually, this is going to be our ONLY big vacation as a family.  My husband does not like to travel.  Oh, he will go somewhere if he has to, and will even eventually enjoy himself.  For instance, as long as I can remember, I have longed to be somewhere else besides wherever I am now.  I was bitten with the bug of wanderlust early on in life and for years I have come back from one trip with nothing on my mind but the next place I could go.  Not so with my husband.  He is content to stay home, going about his business and  content to stay home and care for the livestock (presently one standard poodle and four cats). As our 25th anniversary approached in 2008, I informed him that if he wanted to spend another 25 years with me, we were going somewhere as a couple.  I would pay for it, he could pick the spot, but we were going someplace.  He picked Germany, I purchased a tour with Cosmos, a wonderful budget touring company, and in October of 2008 we had a fabulous 11 day tour of the highlights of Germany.  That was our second vacation as a couple, the first being a trip to Wyoming in 1985, which just happened to coincide with his oldest sister's wedding in Nebraska.

But....even though my son is 24 and my daughter is 18, we have never taken a long trip as a family, unless you count a few weekend trips to Cumberland Gap.   Ever.  Unless you count a trip from Knoxville to Indiana in 1999 to attend the funeral of my grandfather, any trips we have taken have been either me or the kids, or him and the kids.  He has taken them to Pensacola, Florida a few times, sometimes separately, sometimes together, to go visit the church of one of his favorite preachers, but for the most part, if my children get a vacation, it's because I take them.  I took each of them to Europe, at separate times, when they were nine years old.  I took them on a tour of Civil War battlefields, also stopping in Washington DC for a day.  I've taken them to Myrtle Beach twice.  I've taken them more times than I can count up to Indiana to visit my family.  And I took my daughter on a cruise to the Bahamas after I paid for my son to go on a four-month mission trip in Ukraine.

But we've never gone anywhere fun with the four of us together, and now we are.  In a week and a half, we will start off on our first family vacation.  The kids and I are making a huge circle around the United States, from Knoxville TN to the Grand Canyon, from the Grand Canyon to Wyoming, from Wyoming back to Indiana, and then back home again.  And my husband is going with us, at least as far as Las Vegas, when he will hop on a plane and fly back to Knoxville to get home in time for billing at his job.  I confess to a little worry.  We took a few vacations as a family when I was a child, and without fail they were usually disasters, with my volatile alcoholic father eventually losing his cool at being forced to travel in close quarters with the family he could usually go to work to get away from.  My husband does not drink, but he does have a short fuse, and I'm wondering if four adults in a rental car is going to knit us even closer as a family, or illustrate that there is a reason that this family does not take vacations together.

For months I have been thinking and planning about this big trip, and six weeks ago I sat down and starting planning the trip day by day.  I've made hotel reservations and car rental reservations.  I've made arrangements for us to stay in the cabins in a bunch of different KOA campgrounds (kampgrounds).  I'm doing great guns on my summer class so I can turn in my assignments early (this being one of them).  And the children are saving their change to do their part to help pay for the gas that I don't even want to THINK about on this very long road trip.  But suddenly, I'm now uninspired.  The trip that I have not been able to wait for, that I have lovingly planned and anticipated for months now, is almost a reality, and I am wondering if the actual trip will be as exciting as it has been to plan and to wish for it.  It remains to be seen!