Kansas

I was born in Tulsa, we moved to Texas, then to Georgia. In Georgia we lived in Marietta, then another house in Marietta, then to Acworth. I then, on with Joe, I moved to Atlanta, then Fairburn, on to Cartersville, back to Marietta, to Woodstock, Cumming, then finally to where we are now Dahlonega. Some of you have moved a lot more than that. But, to me that is a lot! It's funny though, if someone asks me where I am from I say Kansas. lol I honestly have never lived there. But, that is where my family is from and most of them still are. My Dad moved us to Georgia for work but I don't think they ever really intended on staying or they were just in denial. We all still talk about "moving back" I'm not sure it will ever happen but, it's a nice dream. I call Kansas home for many reasons. During all those moves, all the different places, all the concrete towns with their walmarts that look just like the town before, all the changes here, I can go back to one house on Poplar Street in Wellington Kansas and open the cabinet over the coffee pot and my little juice glass with Dopey on it sits. I can walk out the back door and there's a tree that I climbed 4 feet off the ground up in and thought I was stuck and wailed wanting someone to get me down. I can go back inside and go to the living room where a box of paper dolls that I have played with all my life still sits. I can go out to the garage and get in an old truck that my grandfather once drove and I can drive to town and get carry out pizza that we thought for years didn't deliver only to find out it does but gram thought it was silly to pay the $2 delivery fee when we could just get it ourselves. Silly us! I can take a LEFT at that pizza place and drive past the co-op that my Grandfather and now my Uncle has sold grain at, turn around and keep going and the houses start vanishing to a old building that is a small radio station where my Dad used to work, down some rural roads that various members of my family have driven countless times to an old farm that in my mind hasn't ever changed. There's a garden out back we picked vegetables in, there's a silo out front my sister climbed but i was too chicken, there's a big metal shed where you can surely find some relatives of mine working on some machinery. Go back out to the rural route I drove in on and take a left down a ways is a house my cousin now lives in, before that my grandparents lived. Back into town past the prettiest flat land you will ever see, is a church my parents got married in, Bella was dedicated, some of the best Christmases I can remember happened and 3 of my grandparents funerals were held. you can also pass an auditorium where my Dad's band once played. All the changes in my life good and bad and in between I can always count on those things. Depended on them to be there. As I get older the people and places I have depended on so much are fading. There is nothing I can do to stop it. there are people not sitting in their chairs like they always were when I walked in the door, there is land that no longer has a family name on the deed and I know within time my dopey cup will be gone, too. But, I will always call Kansas home.