Around Bethany, Missouri, the idea of going home starts to rattle me. It's safe to say that after all these years in the south I have become a different person. Not the person that Drew Poggeman, Patrick House and I made fun of in sixth grade, but someone that is nothing of what I was. A boy raised to respect the yield of the land has become a man eager to make a quick dollar for the least amount of work. I haven't taken on the accent, and I still think a lot of southern ways are ridiculous. But now I've been raised on greens and biscuits. I cut tea with a little dip of sugar. Country isn't so offensive, and a lot of it is near and dear to some really great memories. I respect the men for their dignity and gentlemanly conduct, and the image of the typical midwestern man offends me. I date the women.
But, the midwest isn't so far off. I still love the privacy and candid nature of conversation. Company doesn't worry so much about being polite as they do making you comfortable.
If the world were perfect, Alzheimers would cause its victims to grow younger as their minds go back to that time. Right now, my grandfather is living in his high school years or his college years. It's hard to decide. He can't recognize anyone as they are, but if you show him how they looked when he was in his twenties he knows exactly who they are. I've never known too much about the Wallace side of the family. In fact, I don't think they know too much about themselves. This trip helped some of that. Grandpa doesn't say much anymore, unless it's to complain or say something abrupt. Grandma still remembers. We go through pictures and learn who our family was. It amazes me how many people die between our visits.
This fact keeps me happy I moved away. Somehow the midwest causes more heart attacks, cancers and young deaths than anywhere I've ever heard stories about. Even young soldiers come home from battlefields. But beware coming home from war to Iowa.
In 1956 walls were built to encapsulate that time and place. Those parents and their four children. No dust settles there, and I wonder how Bruce Wallace ever grew up to be a fatherly age. He still holds on to so much of that time, tinged with time spent outdoors. The music is piped in directly from the early 1960's. Even when the TV is on, it's more appropriate to watch a video cassette of old shows than to watch anything current that might corrupt this shrine to a better time. I outgrew all the beds by the time I was 15. I outgrew Iowa a few years later.
I still return, looking forward to sweet corn, tomatos and my grandparents. No matter how much I grew up in North Carolina, Iowa is my birthright. No matter how long I stay away, whenever I return it seems as though it's waited for me to return, keeping all the opportunities I can't get here open and waiting. Something in me is still surprised to see Grandma's name next to Grandpa's on that stone. The juniper bushes were helping until we spent a day tearing them out. Overgrown and sharp, they somehow kept things from sinking in. While they grew I could remember going to tend the gravesite with Grandma, making sure her one love was memorialized as only she knew how.
I miss Drake and the sledding hill they tore out, and I miss the independent theatre and West Des Moines. I miss the ideas of things. I'm happy where I am, and I'm happy to tend the fading memories every couple years.
