It’s time and past time, so I go home.
I get off the plane and hug my uncle, hand
over my bag and follow him to his truck.
Cruising down clean country roads, I field
his questions-I’m fine, oh yes-and we avoid certain topics, like
how much I remind him of my mother.
Past roadside piles of pumpkins, we pull into my Grandmother’s
crunching driveway. As we walk into her home
I breathe deeply and there it all is again, it smells like
cookies and coffee, talcum powder and her hand
cream. We sit looking out the window at cornfields
and cows and intermittent traffic, mostly Ford trucks.
On a fog-wisped morning, an aunt arrives in her truck
and we go to the cemetery to visit my mother
and grandfather lying in that checkerboard field,
bearing flowers to cheer up their dirt home,
and I feel the marble, cool under my hand,
feel the edges of the letters under my fingers like
braille. We go to town for the big parade. Minnow-like
children dart into the street after gleaming fire trucks,
squealing and scrambling as firemen throw handfuls
of candy, then flow back to the curb, safe to their mothers.
Shivery fall sunlight impartially burnishes the bright heads of the home-
coming court, then the nodding apple-doll faces in the senior center wagon. Field-
hardened farmers roar by on tractors, accept applause, and return to their fields.
Sudden tears prickle against my lashes. I like
this small town simplicity, this sweet nostalgia for home.
I blink hard and clap as a cousin drives his cement truck
up the street, then kids ride bikes in wobbly formation. Mothers
smile at each other in their lawn chairs, waving proud hands.
Later I join more cousins, blanket and cocoa in hand,
to sit high under the stars overlooking the brightly lit field,
boys at the line of scrimmage indistinguishable except to mothers
and dads cheering in the stands while younger brothers and sisters like
tumbling puppies run back and forth between ice cream truck
and concessions stand. I am entranced, thrilled by my first home
game. I rub chilly hands as the crowd streams down from the stands like
water, and players trickle from the field to pile into waiting trucks,
evading their mothers to drink elicit celebratory beers before they go home.
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