the view from the 785

Been thinking about my Kansas fam the past few weeks. This is a shot taken shortly after landing in Wichita last fall. The pilot barely managed to set us down on the edge of a thunderstorm and I feared it was the end of busysmartypants. Instead, we rented a sedan and sped through the dusk to an outdoor country music show, complete with fires in oil drums and one dollar Coors Light.
I've never lived in this part of the world but something about it feels so familiar.
And lovely.

the 785

I spent a couple of days in the 785 this past weekend. With my people.
Where I'm from, technically, but also technically have never really lived.
It feels good to smell the prairie after a thunderstorm.
Never mind that paralyzing terror of experiencing said thunderstorm at thirty thousand feet.
Not to mention the incredible skies after said storm. All shades of blushing sherbet.
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It feels so good to see family, to hold an elder's hand, to hear voices as familiar to me as breath.
To cackle with laughter over a remembered story.
To walk the same cracked sidewalks, remembering the spring and scratch of buffalo grass underfoot.
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I try to stay within the moments, not fearing the future, not dreading the coming absence. We have each other, and we have the place. That much we'll always have.

the flatlands

Last weekend I visited family in Colorado and Kansas. My grandmother celebrated a major birthday recently and my cousins, aunt and I agreed it was time for a road trip. Interstate 70 takes you directly from the Denver area into western Kansas, and it was a pleasant drive both directions: unusually warm fall days, calm winds, and the company of family.
I forget each time how beautiful the landscape is, so flat and broad, the sky an enormous blue bowl overhead. At home we see snippets of sky, framed by evergreens or reflected in the coastal sea. In western Kansas, the sky fills your vision, edged with crispy sunflower fields, bristly rolls of hay, furrowed dirt roads, the occasional sparkling pond.
My Kansas aunt cooked up two days' worth of goodies, including coleslaw and pumpkin pie. We wandered downtown, sat in the shade with Gram and my cousin's pet dog, played marbles and talked sports and laughed and reminisced about the ones we've lost. My shrink keeps telling me I'm lonely and I keep saying that I'm not, but I will say that this weekend, I felt like I belonged, like people were looking out for me, and that felt pretty great.

road trippin

In my travels last week, I drove nearly 900 miles. Most of the driving was on Interstate 70, a well-engineered four-lane highway (and then some, closer to Denver). I fueled up on bubble gum and coffee and once I set the cruise control, did not tap the brakes for hours. The radio options out on the plains are interesting: all I found were turn-or-burn preachers, the ag report, or country music stations. It was good thinking time.
Tumbleweeds blew across the highway, rolling, hesitating, then sweeping on. The sky seemed bigger, without the Northwest's abundance of hills and mountains and trees. Another good bit of driving I did over county highways, well-maintained and nearly empty of traffic other than farm trucks and other beefy vehicles. I took my time, in no hurry and enjoying time with my grandmother and the late fall sunshine.
Streets near where my aunt and uncle live seemed unusually wide--were they designed for storm runoff? Bigger vehicles? But, there were hardly any cars!

On a brisk morning run I came across a flattened tumbleweed and snapped a photo for a possible future tattoo.

ballfield

I snapped this picture walking home in tonight's mild spring evening. I rounded a corner and here was a ballfield, kids scuffing dirt in the infield, lights halogen-bright. I heard the crack of bat on ball and got such a pang.
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My middle sis posted the other day on Facebook how dunking cookies in her coffee reminded her of grampa and suddenly all the cousins were all chiming in and it turned into a familial trip down memory lane. I miss Dusty nearly every day, and now his house is getting cleaned out and I keep thinking how a piece of my past is going to pass into somebody else's hands and never again will I perch on a chair at the kitchen table, snacking on cookies soaked in his special brew of milky-sweet coffee. Never again sit with him on the bleachers at the ballfield at twilight, cracking sunflower seeds between my teeth, watching his strong tanned hand pencil in the box score. No more nights on the back porch steps looking up at the starry sky as he sang,"Bright and Shiny Moon" or calling shotgun in his rusted-out station wagon for a dump run. No more games of burn-out in the side yard between him and uncle Dugie, no more chasing fireflies on a humid Kansas evening while he put the finishing touches on the hedges. My cousins and sisters and I share this, this missing Dusty, this yearning for him. He was a handsome, classy old guy, with a good word for everyone and such a zest, such a passion for what he loved--baseball and kids and coffee with the guys and teasing gramma, calling her Marge and getting her all riled up.
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It's a good hurt, I guess, missing Dusty.

feeling the lub

I got to spend some time in Hays, America over the weekend, with some of my very favorite people in the world. My aunt and uncle swooped me from the Wichita airport Saturday night, paused long enough for a quick drink with a cousin, and then hit the road, stopping only for gas, diet soda, and a bag of Powers Inferno peanuts. Gramma and I slept in, but by noon on Sunday my cousins and I were ensconced at a dive bar by the railroad tracks, drinking bottled beer and snacking on bull fries (aka Rocky Mountain oysters aka oh-hell-no). Gramma took me out for pancakes the next day, and later on we took my cousin's adorable three-year-old to his first-ever movie, where he spent most of the next ninety minutes playing pretend-delivery driver on a coin operated car in the lobby. Yesterday's early morning departure was made sweeter with a dozen Daylight Donuts, courtesy of another cousin.

And if that weren't enough--photos of good times out on the coast a couple weeks back: puja parakh blog: Elise's trailer