The flight was almost over before I noticed. Sitting in the middle seat, squeezed in between two strangers, my elbows tucked in politely, I had managed to immerse myself in reading. When my eyes finally left the page, I looked out the window. It was meant as only a passing glance, simply to gauge how much further to Chicago, nothing more.
But we were not yet to the city, with its neatly laid-out streets and cookie-cutter houses. No, instead my eyes fell upon the deep green patterns of Illinois farmland, squares of rich greens, knitted together with threads of country roads. The patchwork quilt was lined with dark ribbons of forests and hidden creeks winding their way along the edges of carefully tended farms.
It was a sight I knew well–fifteen years of living in the Northwest, I’d been making regular familial pilgrimages home. I had become accustomed to the beauty of its uniformity from the air. The fertile Midwest prairie turned bread basket held a peculiar charm, touching a nostalgic chord in my transplanted soul.
I had spent two weeks weaving my way through the Illinois farmland that lies between my mother’s home and my grandmother’s now vacant country homestead. Beautiful row after row of tall corn stand at attention along the road, no matter if I had been speeding down Interstate 57 or tentatively finding my way on the back roads, once quite familiar and now just ever so slightly changed as to keep me wondering if I had somehow made the wrong turn.
It seemed disrespectful that the cornfields looked so resplendent with their golden tassels rising in the air, while my father was not there to give his expert voice of approval to their progress. Dad knew every farm and farmer on these roads, had taught their daughters and sons the art of tending abundant fields and raising healthy lifestock, and had walked many of those same fields when the forces of Mother Nature had turned neatly planted crops into acres of devastation.
My daddy has been gone seventeen months, and my heart still grieves, but the land seemed unmoved, offering its praise chorus of bounty when I longed to hear a mournful lament.
“Are those soybeans?” my oldest brother asked, on one of those drives.
“I think so,” I replied, although there could be no doubt. In the silence that lingered, I swear I could hear my father answer, “Those are good-looking beans.”
“Not too much rain this year?” I longed to ask him one more time, knowing my father’s response, “No–just right.”
It had been a good summer for growing–the tomato plants that same brother had planted in memory of our father at mom’s place were thick with green tomatoes, promising a crop far beyond our mother’s needs. I had dutifully tied up the heavy-laden branches, knowing full well the neighbors, and not I, would enjoy their rich juicy fruit.
Now as my flight makes its way over the last stretches of green farmland, I weep. I cry over fields that would have made my father smile with satisfaction, not that they were his fields, but that they were beautiful. I can’t bear to look at them, wiping away tears, hoping my seat mates look the other way.
Soon, I know, my grandmother’s place will be sold, the wild blackberries out back will offer their fruit begrudgingly not to me, but to someone else. Will the next folks discover the secret trail that leads to the pond where as a child I would chase after frogs and pray that the chiggers would be merciful to me?
A generation is coming to an end, and returning home will never again be what it once was. My mother still lives in Illinois, in the house I called home for much of my life, but she is a city girl at heart, formed in the noise and bustle of St. Louis streets. I have inherited my father’s country soul–albeit gentrified, I admit–nevertheless the remnant of his love of the land remains alive in me.
How many more times will I make this journey? When my mother is gone, there will be no need to return and tie up the tomatoes or trim the hedges. There will be no reason left to come back to these verdant fields. For a moment I catch my breath, wiping away warm, salty tears. Who will I be when I no longer know the back way home?
