Where I'm from; where I'm going....

Thing: A blog post that uses both facts and personal narration and comparative structure
Audience: E12 classes
Writer: me
Purpose: To create a piece of  descriptive writing about my hometown using both general, cultural, historical facts and my experiences or memories.
Context: I am studying self-reflection in E12 and we just read the Oxford Project. The Oxford Project is a photo-journal that documents a town in Iowa and its residents. I am reflecting about my own hometown and its impact on my life.

Requirements: 

• Description of your "hometown"
• One memory
• Reflection and comparison of childhood to contemporary self
• Will you return, stay or leave and why?
• Incorporate at least three general, historical, cultural facts about your hometown.
• Provide two images
• 500 words

Trails: 
Link to view:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.5657465,-97.1060097,3a,75y,270h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shl3uBViOrTPn7boKp-rcTA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

In some places the sky scrapes the city landscape, in some places the sea greets the sunset, but some places are dust. That's where I'm from, where dust clouds the horizon in plumes and gritty billowed bursts. Dust and wheat and wind and land stretched out for miles interrupted only by train tracks, grain elevators, and steeples.
112 people, that seems like a lot of people, unless it's a town of people. A town of my people. Tampa. Tampa, where I stumbled my first steps, broke pieces of myself, fed cattle, combined wheat, cooked supper (not dinner), built forts, and ran and ran and ran. I grew up running, grasping for a distant golden brown-blurred blue-white horizon.

I was always looking ahead, even when I was five, I had goals; I wanted to grow up. I cut pictures out of magazines, glued them to my cardboard cut out house: the mom I would be, the house I would live in, the car I would drive, the clothes I would wear; I wanted the magazine dream. Seeking approval and attention; I would sing in the salon as the clients had their hair done, just to see them smile. I loved talking to adults, babysitting, lawn-mowing, basically I did anything to make other people happy.  I remember being a pretty good listener; my parents didn't have to ask me to practice things; I did that on my own. For example, I would practice gymnastics for hours on end, try to read books all by myself and do every chore my parents asked me to do. I even constructed a runway and vault out of a stack of coolers and a small trampoline. But no matter what it was I practiced, once I had completed the task to perfection, I would beg my parents to watch or listen. Maybe that is an oldest child thing, but I remember that was important to me. It's taken me a long time to get to a place where I don't need the approval I once lived and died for. It has taken some conflict, but instead of cutting out someone else's version of life, I am content with my own messy version. My goals are little more focused on the present, I just want to leave those in my life better than when I found them; generally, they will outlast me. Life is bigger than me and I guess I just want to leave a positive imprint wherever I tread.

I don't get back to Kansas much, maybe once or twice a year. But, I think about it often; mostly when I run on windy days or look at open fields, I remember the dust and the wind. Constant wind: snow wind blowing side-ways, skin-cracking summer sun-wind, dew-wicking warm spring-wind, damp-chilling bleak November-rain-wind. Wind, the only constant, as the crops rotated fields; buildings crumbled; people moved away; the wind remained. I moved away.

My home is always with me though, whether it's seeing cattle and thinking of my grandfather, running on a windy day trying to catch my breath, or looking at a vast horizon knowing Tampa, Kansas and Eau Claire, Wisconsin share the same sun. I too am still my five year old version and my forty year old version and all the people I was in between. The biggest lesson I have learned as I have matured has to do with judgment. As a child or young adult, my experience was quite limited and I only knew the world in the brief context of my experience. So, I judged people and things according to my magazine cut-outs. The actors and actresses making life look easy and neat and organized and predictable. What I have learned about judgment is that hasty assumption based on a shallow experience reflects immaturity, ignorance and arrogance. Life isn't easy for a lot people. My assumptions for a long time did not allow me to form deep relationships with others. I realize now that knowledge is gained from asking questions and trying new things which may mean putting yourself at risk of failure or embarrassment.  Although I look back at my "know it all" stage with a little bit of embarrassment and regret now; I do realize that it is all part of growing up and maturing. Without my younger misinterpretation of adulthood, I would never have learned the many lessons I have learned. 

And now when my family and I visit Kansas, it's like jumping into my childhood scrapbook; it's a time warp. That's what the yearly visits are now, my sons rummage through the half-stocked shelved isles in the Tampa grocery store (the only one in a 40 mile radius) and we supper (that's lunch in Kansas dialect) with my grandma at the Sante Fe Trail Cafe, the only restaurant in town. Newly remodeled, the store's facade echoes the old, but better, and the tables slowly fill up around noon. The original outdoor brick was so fragile, it wore away like chalk. And the only remaining original brick that could be saved is now solidified and mortared inside the interior walls, preserved like a mural, patched like an eye-sore, displayed like a trophy collecting dust.

Dwindling since the 1930's (population 232), the departed are like me, occasional visitors. Leaving the permanent residents, empty-nesters, with a median age of 53.5. We who left are escape artists drawn back by necessity, nostalgia, belonging, or maybe just the vastness, the space, the ever-extended uninterrupted sea of land. Travis and I don't necessarily see ourselves ever retiring in Kansas, but I imagine myself there sometimes as an old woman in my grandma's house, by myself years and decades from now. Perhaps I will just sit on the porch and watch the wind turbines or reminisce or run the dusty roads. Whatever it is that pulls me, I am sure of one thing: I am tethered; I am anchored. I am drawn back if not physically then mentally. Perhaps the years will send me home, perhaps the time between will push me farther away, for now, I would just settle for less time between transient visits.