Home.
Jerry and I recently journeyed 3,200 miles over ten days, through 12 states and numerous cities from San Francisco to Pittsburgh, following the path of family. We crossed deserts and mountain ranges, skirted farmlands and big cities, and stopped at every roadside curiosity that caught our fancy.
…on our way home.
Funny word, home. For the past 20 years, home to us has been a cozy place in Virginia where we live and love, and where coffee is served in ceramic mugs—not those annoying, plastic lidded paper cups that emit all substance and steam as a single, scalding jet stream through a tiny, razor-sharp puncture hole…but I digress. Sorry, it’s been a long trip.
However, as we drove eastward, the idea of home took on an entirely new meeting.
We sure felt right at home for three nights in Sacramento, staying with Troy and Jodi and their beautiful girls. Jodi put out the Call to Family, and people I haven’t seen in years swooped in like excited chickadees to say hello.
I’m truly honored to have married in to this Anderson/Perkins/Fitzsimmons tribe, (part of the Mary Oswalt’s Daughters clan). The Oswalts know many secrets about life, inherently or otherwise. They put family first, they love fiercely, and they speak the universal love language: good food. If I wrote about all the wondrous foods I consumed in Sacramento I’d quickly max on word count and make us all hungry again, but I will say that Liz’s carrot cake and Melissa’s banana pudding are worth the price of a plane ticket, should you be so inclined.
…which led to an invite to see the garden—a tamed jungle of nearly all the richness our earth has to offer to anyone like Cousin Liz who can coax it out. Liz is also an artist, although I’m not sure she knows that yet. I cried when she gave me a piece of Sacramento Home that I’ll treasure always: A Liz-made quilt that belonged to Aunt Lois, one of The Sisters.
I could stay here for a while and just love these people, I thought.
The Strawberry Reservoir in Utah–looks like home.
All too quickly we hit the road, headed East on Highway 80 through Nevada and Utah, a beautiful route lined with forests and mountain lakes. Such beauty! For days we flew past, (and stopped occasionally to gawk at) glorious evidence of God’s infinite imagination.
We could live here, we said to each other.
NOTE: In another blog post I’ll tell you about the salt and the bugs, Steamboat Springs, doughnuts, and Touchdown Jesus, but this post is about home, so let’s get back on the road.
We paused again in Loveland, Colorado, an amazingly beautiful town just east of the Rocky Mountains, to see my sister Sue and her husband Dan. We stayed long enough to enjoy some brontosaurus steaks and home-made potato salad,(a recipe I aim to acquire soon). Sue and Dan are storytellers, and, after the boys toured Dan’s amazing automotive wonderland, we sat in their back yard well into the night listening appreciatively to their NASCAR-sales tales in the soft glow of garden luminaries, wishing we had more time.
But the next day we were back on the road, driving toward Denver. There we stopped to see Jerry’s dad and Cathy, who, because of a tragedy, are now parents to 9-year-old Precious in what should be their retirement years. There’s a light in Grandpa’s eyes that makes me think that sweet little girl is not a burden at all.
Still meandering eastward, we lingered for a while in Indianola, Nebraska, where Uncle John and Aunt Peggy filled our bellies with home-cooked stew, complete with vegetables freshly harvested from the plot of goodness outside the kitchen door. We lamented together over the butterflies in the peach trees (who knew they could destroy a peach crop?) and the varmints in the garden, and, after pulling up a few new potatoes and admiring the pair of ‘68 Fords John is loving on in his shop, we again had to wrench ourselves away from home to continue the journey.
Life is so simple here. We could get to like this.
We drove through miles and miles of waving cornfields in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, loving the abundance of it all. And the peacefulness. Nearing the end of our journey we traversed Ohio and holed up for the night in Pittsburgh, where we met our oldest son for dinner at a nice, home-style restaurant. Sorry, I experienced no inclination to settle down in Pittsburgh; however, I so enjoyed being with my son that I treasured every minute, even the part where he and Dad just sprawled out on the hotel bed afterward, watching the Nats play ball while I finished some editing work.
I could be happy doing this for a long time.
One blog post isn’t nearly enough for me to record my pining. How much I wanted the time to…get to know Jodi like a sister, particularly in a busy season I recognize oh, so well, and assure her that, despite not getting more than a glimpse of her man over the heads of those two bouncy girls, she and Troy will get time to themselves again…to read Paddington stories to Blake and hang out with Margaret—who I suspect shares my sense of humor…to learn about Sue’s childhood, especially the years before I was born…to play that perfect practical joke on Doug…just because, well, he’s Doug…to have a real talk with John about more than just the weather…to be there with Uncle John when he turns the key on one of those cars…to—well, again with the word count issue…
In essence, Jerry and I gathered snippets of family across America, and came back to Virginia with a new definition of home. Our home is a bountiful and beautiful nation filled with natural wonders, some harnessed by man and others too magnificent to tame, and we want to see it all. Our home is a 3,000-mile stretch of people gathered around tables in kitchens and backyards across the country, bound by a love that endures across time and distance. Our home is family.
And we love you all. Thank you for your generosity and your love. We miss you already.
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People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. — Luke 13:29
The Portrait Writer 