Look Toto, We're Not In Kansas Anymore!

People come and people go
in the never ending ebb and flow
of life.

Tomorrow is Johns annual family reunion here in Nevada. It used to be held at his sweet mothers in Lamar, but she's been gone a few years now. So the siblings are taking turns at hosting the modest shin-dig. Even that generation is thinning.

What happens when all the older folks pass on? The younger generations are so full of Me-me's and tomorrows that never come, so who's going to care enough to keep the family together? I don't have the answer. My family all, are an independent lot, that spread their wings and let the wind carry them to destinations unknown. The lure of discovery proves too tempting to us seekers. Like Power Ball, you lay down your dollar and take your chances although that multi-million dollar pot is what initially caught your attention, you just hope that you'll at least break even, . My Power Ball jack pot, the treasure I was seeking in my wanderings, wasn't full of dollar signs; it was the green-green grass of a home I hoped to find; somewhere that water rationing and wild fires don't exist; where flowers grow wild and my brown thumb would turn to green; where there are four seasons in equal proportion and where a person of any working class can still buy a home or start a business without a Faustian deal.

That's Missouri in 60 words or less.

I found my Eden, albeit has it's flaws. Like those little nuisances called tornados, twisters, funnel clouds, or since we're just East of the Kansas line I like to call them Look-Toto-we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore ! I know it's a little windy but all the other good names were already taken.
Micro-bursts are another neat little thing I've learnt about since moving here. In fact, I'd never heard of them before...like EVER, until a couple tractor barns got flattened and then sucked up into the clouds and then slammed back down, spitting distance from our newly purchased farm. They don't tear through the countryside ripping grass up by the roots, displacing fish ponds and parking school buses in tree tops, as if gored by a gentleman cow. They just drop down and then shoot back up. Done.Committing a nuisance on the unsuspecting. I had a hard time grasping the whole theory as presented by our meteorologists until I had pulled the winning ticket in a who-does-the-micro-burst-get-to-mess-with-next raffle. I'm just glad that raffle was free 'cause the winner is the loser.

We had a volatile storm season that year. There were hundreds of tornados, we even got nicked by a look-Toto---------, narrowly escaping total destruction. I did however manage to be center stage when a Micro-burst slammed down, flattening my new green house and then ripping it upward scattering my potted plants over the entire north lawn. There I was scarmblin' round on my knees stuffing handful's of mud and uprooted green children into whatever I could find. The rain was so heavy I felt like I might as well be trying to catch fish at the very bottom of Niagra Falls; hopeless and suicidal. I just couldn't turn my back on those emergent, violated plants weeping and laid bare.

I guess that people that grow up in a place like this are much more aware of their mortality. The impending doom that could drop out of the sky without warning, that could take everything and everyone from them like an atomic bomb, is ever present. Even the kiss of an afternoon breeze, soft and caressing, whispers warnings to those who'll listen. Perhaps that's why they place such great importance on the annual Chicken Annies buffet. For those of us that have managed to stay out of mother natures way during her...cycle, the reality of our transience doesn't carry the same impact. We know we won't live forever, but are convinced that we will only go when we are good and ready, thinking we'll have a lifetime to play catch up if we let a few people slip by the wayside.

I've been to enough funerals in the last eight years to question my own life expectancy and I have tried to make more of the time I have at hand rather than planning it for a later date. So basically I'm saying that I'm thankful for the trip we took last month that brought me a little closer to my family for a few days and I plan to plan more plans that won't get lost in the planning for plannings sake and need years to fully cycle. My plans are of action these days because, after all...we don't live forever..
6/19/2005 0:45 AM
word count 791