Great Plains of My Heart

     My childhood was pretty fantastic in a number of ways, but one thing I consider myself the luckiest for is having grown up in the Midwest. I was born in New Jersey, but I will always be grateful for the fact that my family moved to Nebraska when I was still a baby. And when I was six we moved to an acreage in eastern South Dakota. Our time in the country were some of the best years of my life. I effectively grew up there, since we didn't move into town until I was fourteen. When I look back on some of the things we did, the games we played, and the peace and solitude we had, I can only be thankful.

   

     The things I learned from growing up in the country are more numerous than I'm sure I realize. We  had a lifestyle in which plans depended in a very real way on the weather, and the success of a season's harvest directly affected what food we put on our table. We lived off the land, to an extent, and I spent hours as a kid picking raspberries, shelling peas, braiding onions, and making applesauce, not to mention the jams we made and the vegetables we froze and stored in the cellar. We also had chickens from whom we collected free-range eggs, and many generations of farm cats who were supposed to help with the rodent population, but really just provided us with hours of fun. And, living in the rural midwest, we ate local grass-fed beef and pork from pigs raised by our friends. We also experienced devastating storms which made us lose power and blew down trees and even our windmill. Every fall, when the farmers harvested the corn or beans from the field across the street, we would get a swarm of asian beetles (orange ladybugs) on our back porch. Sometimes we heard coyotes at night, and more than a few times we came home to find a family of skunks or raccoons eating the cat food in the garage. 

     Midwest people are hardy, largely because of our brutal winters. One Christmas everyone we knew got snowed in and none of us could get to church. The winter of my freshman year in college, we had a solid ten days of -30 degree weather, when it was so cold the cars wouldn't start. The first snowfall would usually happen in October, and we often had blizzards in May and once a huge ice storm in the end of April. After all of that, less deadly weather occurrences seem like a breeze. And when your life can be put on hold like that because of the forces of nature, you tend to be good about going with the flow and not panicking when things don't go according to plan. 

     The sheer space between us and the nearest neighbors, the quiet summer nights with thousands of fireflies, and the time spent playing in our woods and wading in our creek, will always be impressed upon my mind. I am so thankful to have grown up in such an environment, and I am excited to be going back to my roots, in a sense, when I enter the convent! It won't be the midwest, but it will be wonderful to live in the country again, and never have to leave.