Home Is A Feeling

Why Iowa? 

I so clearly remember my last day as a "Texas girl". My mom's sister, Tanya, and her two kids were at our house helping clean and clear the premise and neighbors were visiting frequently to say their goodbyes. The U-Haul was backed up to our garage and fully loaded with cardboard boxes of all different sizes, contents, and labels. Tables, dressers, pictures, clothes, chairs, beds....everything that once was the heart and soul to the body of my home of eight years was either in the back of that moving van or already in our new, "cozy-sized" home in northern Iowa. Now all that remained was the skeleton. Being inside of 'ol "3605" made me sick. It was cold and stoic and it lacked the glow and the fullness it had once emanated when it had been clad floor to ceiling in the pure essence of home: family pictures, broken-in furniture, toys, and trinkets. Now it was as if the too-big house was echoing with the whispers of the ghosts of good times past.

In an effort to avoid this haunting, my cousin, Paige, and I each nabbed a slice of the large pepperoni pizza that my mother had had delivered and sat in the U-Haul. I don't remember exactly what we talked about, but I know that dread and denial were hanging as thick as morning fog around us as we ate our last of many meals together at that house. It was the end of the world as we knew it! I understood why the move had to happen, but at the beginning of my eighth grade year, a mere 13 years of age, I could think of maybe two worse things that could possibly happen, both of which included death. Yet, I became the master of my emotions by shoving them into the recesses of my mind. I would not shed a single tear (not even when my best friend of nine years, Brittany, bawled her eyes out as we said our final goodbyes) over the move until I was completely alone in my new bedroom in Iowa. I had convinced myself that I needed to be strong for my mother, for my little brother, and for my friends.

The question had arisen many a time leading up to the move and for many months after: "Why Iowa?"

My mother was born and raised in Clarion, Iowa. She walked the same halls of the same high school that I currently attend, cruised the same roads, and, for a time, lived on the same road as we do now. My little brother, Landon, and I were familiar with the town as we had been visiting Great-Grandpa Kenny, Grandpa Sid, Uncle Troy, Aunt Beth, and our cousins over Christmas and Fourth of July for as long as we'd been alive. The 12-hour drive to Iowa was always a thrilling one as Aunt Tanya, Uncle Kenny, Momma, Landon, Jarrett, Paige, and I would all pile into the Suburban and make the "way-back" into the kids' hang-out pad where we'd watch movies, laugh, play, and sleep.

Iowa was a wonderland through my tender, sapphire eyes. The evergreen trees seemed to tower eternally into the sky and their fragrance was so sweet. In the summer, the grass was verdant, lush, and impossibly soft. In the winter, Paige, Landon, Jarrett, and I would spend all day outside in the frigid tundra being pushed down hills on a sled by Grandpa Sid, making snowmen, and having snowball fights. I grew up on Ruthie Rolls, Festival in the Park, the Fourth of July parade, and the fireworks at Lake Cornelia just like any other kid in this town and with the amount of time I spent in Clarion as a child, it's strange to think that it is likely that I saw a few of my future classmates in passing.

With as much as I loved Iowa, I still could not view an 800 mile move as a positive thing. However, it was necessary. The economy had just begun its downward spiral and my mother's home-loan business was hit hard. A single, Capitalist woman, Momma had managed to run a business and keep up an immaculate home WITHOUT ANY HELP from the government, from a man, or otherwise for eight years. It ran her rampant and the fast pace of life was exhausting. She didn't want to struggle to get by anymore. She wanted to enjoy life. She wanted to go home. Who could blame her?

So on the 6th day of October, 2008, Mother, Den (Landon's nickname), and I pulled into the gravel driveway of the old house that had belonged to my now late Great-Grandpa Kenny. A house that I had spent countless hours of my childhood in. A house that I was well acquainted with but now felt completely disconnected from. It sits in the country on a gravel road which we share with a single neighbor. It is wood paneling; which was new to me as most houses, small and large, in the state of Texas are brick. At the time, the top half was barn red and the bottom half was white. Around it was plenty of space to roam and the house shared the property with a couple machine sheds and Great-Grandpa Kenny's old shop. I thought it was a cute little house but this new place just wasn't home.

That night, either due to the unfamiliar and unappealing sight of the green carpet in our new old house or the completely foreign smell of chicken litter in October, the levies broke and I cried about the move for the first time. I cried because I missed my daddy and I feared for what the distance would do to our relationship. I cried because I wished that Brittany was with me to uplift me and tell me it would all be okay. I cried because I was being forced to face a new school and new people the very next morning and I was terrified. And I even cried because I hated the way this stupid old house still smelled like Great-Grandpa Kenny. I thought, then, that this was about as sick and dismal as I'd ever felt.

Funny....I would trade now for then in a heartbeat if I could.