Walking the Land

One of the things that has happened this past year is that I (finally) feel a kind of urgency towards knowing and understanding where I came from.  By divorce, I have somehow been initiated into true adulthood in my family, and I feel more comfortable asking questions about the gaps in family stories.  Also by divorce, I have learned where my real, down-to-the-center-of-the-earth roots are.  I always thought they were with the Ex, but they are within, and everything that is within somehow germinated in Kentucky.

This weekend, I "walked the land" with my Dad.  It had been years since I took a walk around the perimeter of the farm where my grandparents lived.  After our walk, I stayed behind for a while, sitting under a tree in the yard.  I thought about all the years I had come down to the farm, all the iterations of my self as I grew and the places on that land I touched.  The field at the top of the hill where my childhood friend and I tried (unsuccessfully) to catch one of the horses.  The pond where I tried shooting a pistol for the first time.  The relatively flat yard where we had picnics and bonfires and dangerous games of Jarts.  And all the Christmases in the house.  Year after year, for as long as my grandmother could do it.  

As I sat under the tree, time traveling, I felt this long, unbroken thread of loneliness passing through so many of the events.  Every time we got together, there seemed to be some heartbreak brewing.  A separation, a family quarrel, someone moving away. But every time it was someone different who had the burden of loneliness with them.  They carried it sometimes quietly and gently, sometimes with hard, sharp elbows and a face of iron, sometimes drenched in it.  It was almost like the loneliness was our precious family heirloom shared among everyone so we each had a chance to connect with it.  This past year, it felt like my turn to carry it.

I do not know who is next to take this heirloom, but already I feel it is lifting from me.  I sat under a tree in the yard, waving away the same kinds of bugs that bit and stung me when I walked barefoot in that yard as a child.  I saw our legacy, this loneliness we share among ourselves, but I also saw the traces it left behind -- the bottomless love, compassion and creativity which are also our family heirlooms.  This is where I come from, and I mean to go back here -- literally and figuratively -- as much as I can.