I dated a guy in college who hated California. He said he felt closed in, surrounded on all sides. Neither of us lived more than just a few miles from the ocean. I didn't understand, I told him. All we had to do was stand on the shore, eyes on the horizon, while the tide sucked the sand from under our feet to understand the vastness of the world and the limitless possibilities around us. We let it lie between us, one of the many reasons why things would never work out for us. Eventually, and perhaps ironically, it was an ocean that came between us.
He was from Indiana. I visited his home with him one summer. The first thing I noticed when we landed were the corn fields that began where the runway ended. Unlike the runway, the cornfields didn't end. As we drove from Indianapolis north, it seemed that every road was lined with vast and limitless corn. I made sure to point out to him, probably more than once, that we were, quite literally, surrounded on all sides. Completely closed in by corn.
I returned to the midwest later, how many years I'm not sure, with my husband, my five-year-old stepson, and our 3-month-old infant. We drove for over a day without stopping to visit my in-laws. I'm not sure how many hours were added by the fact that I was still nursing our son--stopping at rest areas or pulling to the side of the road as his demands called for. It didn't occur to me at the time, couldn't possibly have occurred to me, to look out my window at any moment to see the worlds we were passing through.
I couldn't tell you much of anything about that first trip except that our bed was horribly uncomfortable, and I sat on it crying to my husband and desperately pumping my breasts because I simply couldn't sustain our baby, who was later diagnosed with GERD, with my limited milk supply, probably a result of what was later diagnosed as PCOS. I remember sitting on that bed listening to my father-in-law's TV on the other side of the wall feeling miserably incompetent as a mother, my husband and I both completely ignorant of what to do.
Since that first trip, I have returned to South Dakota at least every other year. And as things tend to do, the insecurities and confusions of those days have dissappated to soft memories, gently clouded and discolored where they need to be. Now I can look outside of myself when I'm there, and I understand what that once-long-ago boyfriend said.
Standing at the edge of my in-laws' drive, the earth stretches on to where it whispers its secrets to the setting sun. You could walk and walk until you reached an ocean. And in spite of the limitlessness of the sea, it is the end of a place. When the sand is sucked from under your toes, you cannot chase it through the wild grass until it reaches a meadow where, if you are lucky, you will see a deer emerge to check that the world is safe for her fawns.
This place that once belonged to a boyfriend I didn't understand, now belongs to my father-in-law, my husband, and my sons. Slowly, it is becoming mine. I sit in the shelter above the harvested corn fields and watch the pheasants play. The wind roughly rattles the walls around me, thick with the scent of the miles it crossed before reaching me. I understand better now the endless open miles.
I returned to the midwest later, how many years I'm not sure, with my husband, my five-year-old stepson, and our 3-month-old infant. We drove for over a day without stopping to visit my in-laws. I'm not sure how many hours were added by the fact that I was still nursing our son--stopping at rest areas or pulling to the side of the road as his demands called for. It didn't occur to me at the time, couldn't possibly have occurred to me, to look out my window at any moment to see the worlds we were passing through.
I couldn't tell you much of anything about that first trip except that our bed was horribly uncomfortable, and I sat on it crying to my husband and desperately pumping my breasts because I simply couldn't sustain our baby, who was later diagnosed with GERD, with my limited milk supply, probably a result of what was later diagnosed as PCOS. I remember sitting on that bed listening to my father-in-law's TV on the other side of the wall feeling miserably incompetent as a mother, my husband and I both completely ignorant of what to do.
Since that first trip, I have returned to South Dakota at least every other year. And as things tend to do, the insecurities and confusions of those days have dissappated to soft memories, gently clouded and discolored where they need to be. Now I can look outside of myself when I'm there, and I understand what that once-long-ago boyfriend said.
Standing at the edge of my in-laws' drive, the earth stretches on to where it whispers its secrets to the setting sun. You could walk and walk until you reached an ocean. And in spite of the limitlessness of the sea, it is the end of a place. When the sand is sucked from under your toes, you cannot chase it through the wild grass until it reaches a meadow where, if you are lucky, you will see a deer emerge to check that the world is safe for her fawns.
The infinite not only touches this place in its space, but also its time. Sons farm the same land as their fathers. Houses are left to decay, windows broken, resigned to fate; perhaps eventually someone will bother to tear them down. For now, the old white farm houses are a surrender to not just the passage of time, but the uselessness of fighting against it. Unused silos stand sentinel where they have not been replaced by the modern behemoths of agriculture. Tractors slow traffic on highways. There is a forgetful old man behind the counter at the hardware store. Main Street still exists.
This place that once belonged to a boyfriend I didn't understand, now belongs to my father-in-law, my husband, and my sons. Slowly, it is becoming mine. I sit in the shelter above the harvested corn fields and watch the pheasants play. The wind roughly rattles the walls around me, thick with the scent of the miles it crossed before reaching me. I understand better now the endless open miles.
There is something so peaceful about the middle of nowhere. I am just getting to the place where I appreciate it. The ocean has always been my home and soul. It always will be. But oh how the little peace of heaven my parents live on calls me now too. I never believed it could happen. Me, the West LA girl wants a spot of land on a mountain at 10000 feet elevation. But I do.
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