I'm From

I’m From…

I’m from Crystal Lakes,
last house on a dead in street with a metal cable that separated “us from them”.
I’m from a house with a curved driveway and a front porch with a black scroll supports I loved to climb and a bedroom I shared with my sister, beds bumped together.
I’m from a red brick house with a breeze way, a flower planter and a large cement patio where we had picnics and parties on the outside and danced to my father’s old LPs, watched Little House on the Prairie and roller-skated in the basement on the inside.
I’m from a white brick ranch house down a long gravel lane on six acres of land in the country.
I’m from many houses but not one single home.

I’m from yards with rock gardens and flower beds with a rainbow of colors-- yellow daffodils, red tulips, orange poppies with bright black centers, and blue hyacinths.
I’m from vegetable gardens, hands in the soil planting seeds, pulling weeds, watering, hoeing, harvesting—sweet corn, green beans, sugar snap peas, ripe plump tomatoes, bibbed lettuce, radishes, carrots, rhubarb and more.
I’m from canning-- podding peas, stringing beans, cutting corn off the cob, skinning tomatoes, peeling apples and pears—making dilly beans, salsa, bread and butter pickles, tomato juice, and applesauce.

I’m from riding lawn lawnmowers on hot Saturday afternoons with birds circling overhead, swooping and diving down dangerously close wasting their efforts to protect their field nests as I listened to the cassette single of “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette on my Sony Walkman.
I’m from a barn with a covered patio and a porch swing from which I swung back and forth as I smelled rain thicken the air, watched dark clouds loom in the distance, heard the rumble thunder roll in and felt the first drops of rain as Mother Nature unleashed her anger during a summer night’s thunder storm.

I’m from baby dolls—Rub-a-Dub Dolly, Baby Sneezes, Jackie, and the “Giant Baby”, too, but the best doll baby of all was “Pouty Baby”—I loved her so much my mom bought me two.
I’m from Barbie Dolls and Barbie clothes (some store bought and some homemade) which I spent endless hours playing with in my own land of make believe.

I’m from springs spent riding my red bike down the street wind in my face, trying to beat my sister to the stop sign.
I’m from summers spent playing kickball and baseball in the neighbor kid’s yard with “ghost man on third” when we were a few players short of a team.
I’m from autumns spent carefully selecting new school supplies, shopping for new school shoes and clothes, happy to be back in school after a summer at home missing my “school friends”.
I’m from winters spent wishing for a white Christmas, snuggled deep under layers and layers of mom’s warm hand-made afghans fighting off the chill of a house heated by the heat of only a kerosene heater.

I’m from delivering newspapers with my mom out of our blue Dodge Aspen station wagon on hot summer days halfway through which we’d stop for a Fago and chips at Notter’s market.
I’m from bussing tables at the Amateur Trapshoot Association cafeteria for two weeks each sweltering August for two summers where I gave the aged shooters my time and a listening ear for the stories of their youth.

I’m from after school guitar lessons with Sister Anne where I traded finger nails for calloused fingers so that I could make music, live music, and feel music and not just hear music.
I’m from first chair clarinet in the junior high band, delicately blowing life into my instrument to play the sorrowful tune of “If” by Bread.
I’m from talent shows singing “Out Here On My Own” and “The Rose” – both songs having a heart tugging meaning to them then and now.

I’m from an alcoholic father and a mother who stayed with him, choosing that life for her daughters, too.
I’m from wanting children of my own to perhaps I can have none.
I’m from “congratulations you have a son” to “we think there’s something wrong with him.”
I’m from mother of one son to mother of two sons.
I’m from “it’s my fault” and “God made a huge mistake when he gave him to me” to “God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called.”
I’m from feeling weak because I cry and because I’m tired to knowing that I cry and I am tired because I have been fighting the fight and in doing so that is strength—giving up is weakness.
I’m from knowing that we only become courageous by being tested and I have never really quit, I just had to rest for a bit.

I’m from the movie Pay It Forward where the idea of doing a good deed for nothing in return but having it spread forward  like a beautiful infection infected me.
I’m from the movie Signs where the lesson I learned was that if we truly opened our eyes we would see the things and people God put in our lives to answer our prayers, to guide our ways, to give us the tools we need, to show us our purpose.
I’m from the movie All About Steve where Mary Horowitz taught me that simple things like red boots can remind me to be happy when inside I really feel like crying and where the power of words, the spoken word, was said so profoundly when she said, “There are meaningful words, there are pointless words, and then there are words that hurt!”

I’m from dandelion wishes and day dreams longing for better days.
I’m from reflecting and remembering and not letting go.
I’m from knowing that “knowing” is one thing but unless I can “be” that all the things that I know really make no difference when the challenges face me.
I’m from reading and writing and thinking deeply, trying to make sense of what I can to learn the lessons from both the good things and the bad.
I’m from many things, many places, many memories, but most of all, I’m from God and in Him I need to have more faith—because trust is belief in someone, but faith is acting on that belief and I know I gotta have more faith to get to where I want to go because I come from where I’m from.