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COLUMNS:   Another Day in the Country

Contributing writer

My sister and I are about to begin our 10th year in Ramona.

Ten years? In Kansas? A whole decade? We began this odyssey long before 2000 but the millennium was the year we moved to Ramona, cast our lot with this small community that held the lives of our ancestors.

We used to wonder how long a small place like Ramona — population 100 (more or less) — could survive. For sure, if we intended to experience our relatives living in Ramona, we needed to do it now. So, we came.

In our 10 years, we’ve witnessed a host of transitions as our family and our old friends in town completed their life cycles. That’s a nice way of saying that we’ve experienced some profound losses during these years. We’ve also had quite the wonderful adventure with these same people, that we couldn’t even imagine if we’d stayed in our more routinely predictable lives in California.

It’s quite natural when you reach a mark like 10 years to take note of what has transpired. You ask yourself questions about the nature of your journey and how it has influenced your life.

Heavy questions. Much heavier questions than the ones we asked as we embarked on this Kansas adventure.

At this point, loss is still heavy in our hands. While I’m grateful for every minute spent with Uncle Hank, Aunt Naomi, Mom and Dad, Tim and Tony (to name a few), I grieve that they are gone.

One day, my dad was talking about what it was like to return to his hometown after having spent his life elsewhere.

“I half expect to see my dad walking down the street,” he said.

I empathized with his comment. I understood what he meant, but not until now do I really know what he felt.

I still half expect to see Uncle Hank walking past the bank building on his way to the post office to get his mail. We walk into the café in Durham and half expect Tony to be sitting in a booth, nursing his coffee in a Styrofoam cup. I drive the lake road and half expect to see Tim’s truck emerging out of that cloud of dust, but it’s someone else.

I’m grateful for all the memories, the shared experiences, the fun, the laughter, the TIME! And, at the same time, I’m sad that they are gone. This is the conundrum of life: holding sadness and joy, grief and rejoicing, expectation and acceptance in the same cup, the same hand.

After all is said and done (quite literally), after we are gone, what is left — personal things for greedy folk to quarrel over? What is the legacy we leave? For what little things will we be remembered?

I wonder. When I am gone, will folk remember the words I write, the things I paint, my Matchbox cars, and the fact that I love black licorice?

Grandma Ehrhardt has been gone for 35 years. I have her wedding dress in the “Bridal Suite” of the bed and breakfast and her rocking chair setting in my bedroom, but it’s her recipes I enjoy the most. It’s the chocolate cupcakes with oodles of sour cream and her dumplings.

As I stir in the flour, Gram is at my elbow giving directions. Her old apron is hanging on the hook by the stove.

My mother loved to garden. I now tend her roses in the backyard of the house we built for her. Every once in awhile, when a particularly lovely rose opens (or it’s a perfect bud still blooming in November, the last rose on the vine for the season) I cut it and say to my sister, “Here’s a rose from Mom. Enjoy.”

Years ago, shortly after coming to Ramona, I ended up in the hospital for a day after having emergency surgery. When Tim came to visit, he didn’t bring flowers, he brought a big stuffed green frog that sang. It’s been sitting on the closet shelf. The batteries had run down. I retrieved it, put in new batteries, pressed the button and smiled at the corny guitar introduction, “I guessed you’d say, what can make me feel this way — my girl, talking ’bout my girl.”

It’s another day in the country and one big old green frog is still singing, when Triple T can’t deliver the message in person.

Last modified Nov. 19, 2009

 

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