Going Home

My Mom & Dad dee. I. vee. oh. are. see. e'd when I was 20, by then I had already been gone since I was 17, my Brother who is just a year younger had came and went a couple of times , my Sister Tami left shortly after the big D. at age 13. Our youngest Brother stayed the longest but was bounced between our parents and Ants & Uncles. I have often felt saddened when someone would say "we always come home on the weekends" or "I'm going home to see my folks". Fragmented family's often times don't lend themselves to having a roots kind of home. I remember when my Mom or Brother would say "are you coming up home for Christmas?" I'd reply "I am home but we are up coming for a visit"...petty I know. Trips north to visit family have always been so special to me, it has also been bittersweet. Recently one of my favorite Uncles passed away after nearly 3 year cancer battle (just for the record...most of them are my favorite, 9 on my Mom's side and 4 on Dad's). Packing and heading up north this time was that very rare feeling of "I am going home". A trip back to see Aunts, Uncles, cousins and neighbors that I hadn't seen in years, catching up, and being surrounded by people that I really love alot, at a very hard time...bittersweet.

Exhale. I am here, not my home but a home that I and my siblings spent ALOT of time at when we were kids, there are other homes, but for this trip this is where I want to be. The farm of my Uncle and my Ant. home. This is where I spent many summer days on the back of a horse or a pony herding the milk cows in the field out behind the barn. I also spent alot of time riding pigs and those milk cows, Uncle was fine with us riding pigs...not so fine with us riding the milk cows, especially when their milk production dropped. He never passed up a hard luck case or a good laugh. Over the years my Uncle and Ant took in many strays...human and critter...young and old. No one was ever turned away from their table. When he "went home" tickets were purchased post-haste, nieces, nephews, friends of his children that came to stay for the weekend and left over a year later...or never left until they were adults...we all came "home".

This is Sandy.
My Uncle and his son went to buy tractor parts, and came home with her, they bought her off a slaughter truck for $20, hooves over grown and nothing but skin and bones, she was in really rough shape. Another Aunt of mine, who lives down the road from Uncle had to have knee surgery...she was in rough shape too, so the donkey was named after Ant Sandy.

One day Kyle ran to the house saying "Grandpa Sandy is down, we need the 4 wheeler!" Uncle said "We'll take the truck, hop in" then he drove to get his son to help "get ol' Sandy up" all the while thinking it was Ant Sandy who was down. He pulled up to where Dan was, and said at the same time he saw Sandy the donkey on the ground "Dan, Sandy is down we need to go..." The story was still being told and laughed at as we all sat around and visited as families do when a loved one "goes home".

Ant Sandy's knee healed, and Sandy the donkey managed to get pregnant and have little Ellie Mae a couple of weeks ago, even though she still looks a bit rough she looks a whole lot better than she did when she stepped off the slaughter truck, another stray taken in. My Uncle will be missed, he was a good example of giving and reaching out to so many of us. It was a bittersweet trip...so if home really is where the heart is...then I can truly say...

...it was good to be "home".