From the Storybook of a Nebraska Farm Child

It's hard to believe I've been in Alaska for a full month now. It's even harder to believe that one week from now I will be packed up and ready for my flight back to Nebraska. I have so much to say about the great things I have learned about myself and about my profession while here, but I'll leave that for next week. For today, I want to post on home. Perhaps it's because of the incessant rainy weather here this last week. Perhaps it's the various heartaches of dear friends around me. Or perhaps it's simpy a deep rooted love for family that has manifested itself in a bit of homesickness, but whatever the source, the reality is that I am so grateful for my family and for the beautiful and blessed childhood I can claim my memories from.

I called home last Sunday. My brother Andy answered the phone and told me Mom would not want to talk to me that day because they were in the middle of freezing corn, and thus she was cranky. Freezing corn. Something that every Midwest farm child can relate to. Long days of husking ear after ear of golden kernals and boiling and cutting and cooling and measuring and bagging nearly a hundred bags of fresh sweet corn. Corn that your Grandpa and Dad and brothers labored relentlessly and tirelessly over. I used to not be excited for corn freezing days. They were long and messy and people did understandably get quite cranky. But, after three successive summers of being away from home and absent for this ritual, I find myself longing for the serenity and simplicity of those corn shucking days - my dad tuning his static-y turck radio to old country music, my Grandpa listening to me complain about worms in too many of the ears of corn while he joyfully and delicately brushed silk from his perfect ear with a toothbrush, my dad eating handful after handful of the corn that he cut (that was supposed to make it into the ziplock bags and not his mouth) so that my mom never ceased to win the battle of who made the most bags from each cutting.... There's something so magically storybook perfect in all of it....

This is me many years ago with my dear Grandpa Starman - a man of faith, strength, character, diligence and love. He passed his loyalty to his faith and his work on to his son - my Dad - and I am forever grateful to him for his example and love and for being such an integral part of my childhood on the farm.

 

I wrote a semi-professional poem about this special, cliche, Nebraska childhood experience of freezing corn back in my days of college English courses. My newest mission shall be to see if I can find that little piece of art.... :)