Day 20: Yes, But Will 5 Wrongs Make a Right?

Day Twenty

Yes, But Will 5 Wrongs Make a Right?

I have a theory about getting lost – which should not surprise you because I really have a theory about nearly everything. When I get lost, I go faster. I figure that I don’t know where I am right now but if I keep on going, sooner or later I will figure it out – so why not get to that place sooner? It does make sense in that, “yes- but-it-gives-me-a-headache” way, doesn’t it? While you are holding your head, I want to remind you that if you make a right when you should have made a left, generally 2 more lefts will get you going in the right direction. This is why I would rather be driving if we are together and we are lost. All those lefts that YOU will make will surely give me car-sickness, and, to miss-quote the Incredible Hulk, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m carsick.”

This actually reminds me of a time when six of us were out driving in Western Kansas and we got lost. That’s not an easy thing to do – get lost in Western Kansas that is – you can drive for miles in any direction and all you will see is sky from horizon to horizon, about three weathered buildings, and a tree. You will be driving in prairieland -- in God’s country – and if you have good eyes, stand really still and look, you could probably see God because nothing else is in the way.

We were going out to the church my Mom went to as a girl. I was driving, my Mom’s cousin, Lila, was holding the passenger door and Mom was riding shotgun. (I have always wanted to say that – “riding shotgun.” Honestly, I have no idea if Mom WAS riding shotgun or not cause I don’t know what it means. Sounds cool though, huh? And Mom would be thrilled all the way down to her 80-year-old toenails to find out that she was riding shotgun). My aunt, Cay, was grinning sweetly in the back next to my niece, Kelsey, and her best friend, Rachelle, who where cracking CONSTANT jokes at my expense and taking pictures of EVERYTHING (they really need a life in my opinion.)

I think “they” must have moved the church (Not Kelsey and Rachelle – sorry to confuse you). (“They” did move the big house I grew up in by the way --- I might save that story though). (Probably not the same “they” that moved Mom’s church.) (Have you lost track of the story yet? ) I do remember going STRAIGHT from Great Bend to get to Mom’s church. We went straight and continued to go straight – faster – when the pavement turned to a gravel road. Everyone was begging me to stop and look for a map. But I get carsick if I drive and look at a map – carsick and dead. So I kept on going.

Finally we drove past a big farm. I ignored Kelsey and Rachelle’s constantly snapping camera as I waddled out of the car (stiff muscles – driving at warp nine can do that to a person) and knocked on the door. No one home.

Got back in the car and drove to the farmhouse NEXT to the one we just knocked on. This farm was BIG --- two farmhouses, tractors, barns, sheds. Nobody was home at that farmhouse either except a few dogs who were barking at me and some ducks that waddled by – they must have been going at warp nine too.

By now, Lila, Cay and my Mom were all offering me advice – none of which was to get back in the car and go faster. Kelsey and Rachelle were helpless with laughter. I drove around the farmstead until I came to a tractor that was about 4 stories high and got out (as my niece and her friend, still giggling, were wildly snapping pictures and my mom was covering her eyes). (My mom wasn’t really covering her eyes – she was giggling along with the two troublemakers. Mom SHOULD have been covering her eyes as any self-respecting 80-year-old woman would do in the situation, but NOOOOOOOO, not MY mother). I boldly marched right up to that monster. This strapping young farmer/model gracefully jumps down from Olympus and grins at me as I explain with as much dignity as I could muster that we lost Pawnee Rock (he might have been grinning at the two college girls hanging out the backseat window but I think he was grinning at me.) With his excellent directions, we drove directly to the church.

Standing alone in the middle of the wide, Kansas prairie is a red brick Mennonite church. Our destination was actually about a half a mile to the south where we would find many of Mom’s family.

I always have a haunting feeling standing in that cemetery by Mom’s girlhood church looking at relatives I have never met – their tombstones, their graves. The stark scenery seems to be filled with the lives of these people who endured drought and harsh winters, laughed, cried, had babies and died under the vast Kansas sky. Mom again tells the stories we all know by heart – memories of her brother who went to Korea and was killed by a drunk driver only months after he came home; about her mother who sat up in bed right after Don was killed and knew her boy was dead, about the two aunts who both were named, “Lufentina,” about her mother’s young death of cancer. As my mom speaks, I can hear the witnesses of my relatives, feel my heritage laughing and teasing me beside my niece as they challenge me to make the right choices, to make the right turns, to keep it all in eternal perspective.

And if I ever forget, my niece has the pictures.

Keep it all in eternal perspective