September Story

Well, the promise is that we will be getting cool weather this week. I'm more than glad to hear that, but I really need my furnace repairman to keep his promise and get back to me. Yes, I have called him, but that April promise that we would get my furnace back online and working is now coming to a point where said promise needs to be fulfilled. I really like the guy, and I'm pretty sure he'll get it done. I do have a little ace up my sleeve because I have a gas fireplace in my living room that I'm itching to turn on.



 My magical helpers have been earning their wings lately in my house. We have done our share of decluttering, decorating, cleaning, and enhancing. I'm sitting here right now with a brand new pedicure, and that is a luxury I've never had. I still have those same little crooked toes, but they sure look better. I call these two pedicured friends little hobbit feet. Sounds super enticing, does it not?



 I had a bit of an electrical issue last week, and my lights began to flicker, fade, flash, brown out, and expire. Then they would come right back on and repeat. Anything electrically powered caused this to happen, and sometimes the house just went through the paces by itself. After the power company checked my lines out, I called my wonderful electrician. He is a former student, and he is so good to me. Of course, he came right away and inspected the house and the antique ... I mean old... wiring that I have here. His verdict: I needed a major fuse, which he installed, and voila! the lights were back to normal.



 This young man is just wonderful…and very organized and sensible. He flat-out told me that my fuses should have just gone out. He said that they don't usually flare, flicker, flash, go out, and then come back on. I looked at him straight in the eyes and told him that the lights probably had gone out. Then I said that it was my magic that was causing all the flickering and flashing. My former student who knows me so well stood there a minute and thought of what to say. I can only imagine what might have been going through his mind, and some of it is kind of frantic because here sat his old school teacher mumbling about magic right in the middle of Missouri. But finally he looked at me and smiled. Then he said, "Yep. That sounds about like you."



 September is a month that bridges the gap from practical to magic. I don't know if any of you were lucky enough to get to see the new movie Practical Magic. It sure has big, pointy black shoes to fill. I got to thinking about my childhood and the magic that surrounded me as a little girl. I'm not sure, but I believe a good deal of it came from a Better Homes and Gardens collection of stories for young people. Another bit of it may have come from another storybook. In fact, according to the Internet, I have woven several short stories together. One of my favorite stories was “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” a Norwegian fairytale collected by Peter Kristen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe.  (I seem to remember the name of the story as “More North than North. More South than South.”)The story had a white bear who was a prince by night and a polar bear in the day. A young woman married him, and she was not allowed to look at him at night. When she disobeyed this promise, three drops of tallow from her candle fell on his shirt. It's an enchanting story of travel and love and magic. I thought there was an old witch called Baba Yaga in this story, but she doesn't appear in the current tellings of the tale.



However, I spent my younger days living out this story. I loved to take my collie dog and make the appropriate “sacrifices” to an old, invisible witch I called Baba Yaga as we went down to the creek near my house. It was the only Woodland area my parents allowed me to visit because I was a little bit too curious to go into the real woods that our farm holds. This is just a little creek that I can see every day from my windows. However, it was enough. Baba Yaga, that old witch, allowed me to sit by the side of that creek and absorb new stories that were not in the book. She told me tales and as long as I was good and my dog was good, we could sit and listen.



 My favorite time of the year to go was Autumn, of course. Was I afraid of snakes? Never! Nothing bothered me — including the bugs, the chiggers, or the threat of poison ivy and oak. My dog was very good, and so was I. We learned a lot. Old Baba Yaga shared her secrets well, but she made me promise not to tell you a single one. So, of course, I won’t.



As the first day of Autumn approaches on Tuesday, I plan to have a real pumpkin on my fireplace hearth, a candle glowing, and some vegetable soup. Beyond that, I suppose Autumn will have to enter on her own, and I look forward to those first frosty mornings. Do you have Fall traditions in your home? What is your favorite season? I'm lucky because my family represents all seasons. My mom's mother loved Spring, so pinks and greens and early flowers made her happy. My dad's mother was a fellow Autumn lover, so just the hint of Fall makes me want to bring out her special apple cake recipe and give it a whirl. My mother and my dad loved Summer. Nothing made them happier than haying time and garden time. Of course, that leaves old Mr. Winter, sitting in the corner by himself. I always hesitate to say it because people somehow blame me when the weather gets cold, but I love Winter. I love the short days, long whispery nights, the blustery wind, and of course, that magical and glorious SNOW. Let me know what season you embrace. Whatever it is, I hope the first day of Autumn brings you joy …and love …. and kindness.

I’m Batman

Tomorrow—or today, depending on when I decide to post this—would be Gerred’s 45th birthday.

I have been thinking about Batman and so much more.

Gerred was a Batman boy from the time he was little. He had a white cabinet in his bedroom that I suppose was intended to be a china cabinet, but there wasn’t a china cup in sight. It was stuffed with Batman toys and figurines, books, clippings, and whatever other Batman treasures he accumulated.

We had seen Michael Keaton as Batman at the movies, and as far as I was concerned, Michael Keaton was the real Batman. There have been other good ones. Gerred especially liked Ben Affleck, which surprised both of us a little, and we agreed Christian Bale was good. But Michael Keaton was Batman in the same way that there is only one real Santa Claus. The others may wear the suit, but you know.

Gerred wore black a lot, and for a big boy he was remarkably graceful. A gym teacher, Kyle Dill, once called him “Cat” because of the way he moved. That made one of his favorite little performances particularly appropriate.

It didn’t matter where we were or what we were doing. It didn’t matter whether I was busy, aggravated with him, or trying to be serious about something. Gerred would sashay across the room, come right up beside me, raise one arm dramatically over his head, look me rivet eye to rivet eye, and announce:

“I’m Batman.”

And my heart would laugh.

He knew it, too.

There was another Batman day when Gerred was probably eleven or twelve. We were driving through Huntsville on what must have been one of those wonderful big-trash days when people put things out by the road that are much too interesting to drive past without looking.

And there it was.

It was an enormous cardboard Batman display, probably from a store or movie theater. It must have been five or six feet tall and ten or twelve feet long, folded in the middle—a whole Batman scene sitting out by somebody’s trash.

I hit the brakes.

“Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!”

I backed up right there on the highway, looked at him, and said, “Of course we’re getting it.”

Because of course we were.

My heart was thumping, and I know his was about to beat out of his chest. We wrestled and wiggled and waddled that enormous thing around until somehow we got it into my car and brought it home. Then we had to clear a corner of Gerred’s bedroom, which was no small undertaking. His bedroom was not Zen. Eventually we slithered our prize into place and pronounced it good. It was beautiful.

Gerred and I always considered that one of our great trash-day scores. His daddy had been a great repurposer, always able to see what some discarded thing might become and dreaming up another life for it. I think there was a little bit of his daddy in our excitement that day, too. Somebody else had thrown something away, and we could see treasure.

And then there was the Batman suit.

By this time Gerred was too tall and too grown-up-shaped for the children’s Batman costumes hanging at Walmart, but he still wanted to be Batman. He loved, absolutely loved to dress up in a costume.

Unfortunately, he had a mother who couldn’t sew. That isn’t entirely true. My Grandma Minnie was a wonderful seamstress. She made both of my wedding dresses, and when I was a girl in 4-H, I could sew quite nicely—as long as I was safely tucked under Grandma Minnie’s wing, with considerable supervision and occasional intervention.
Outside Grandma Minnie’s wing, my sewing ability deteriorated considerably.

But Gerred wanted a Batman suit.

So we repurposed a black sweatshirt and black sweatpants. He had black gloves and black tennis shoes. Most of Batman was therefore taken care of.

All Mama had to do was make the headgear. This turned out not to be a particularly beginner-friendly sewing project. It had to fit over his head and come down around his neck, and most importantly, it had to have those unmistakable Batman ears.

I made it.

He put the whole thing on and went wherever he was going—I can’t remember now whether he wore it for Halloween, Homecoming parade, or both. I do remember that he was terribly hot. Gerred ran hot anyway, and when he finally pulled that black headpiece off, his hair was absolutely wet and sweat was running down his face.
But he was grinning.

“I felt like Batman,” he said.

And then again:
“ I felt like Batman.”

That was all I needed to hear. My sewing had been a success. Then he looked at me, with that little Gerred grin, and added: “Thank you, Mama. It kind of looks like a cat, but thank you.”

Apparently I had made the ears a little too big.
He had wisely waited until after the event to mention it.

Years later, Gerred became a much better seamster than his mother and even made himself a Japanese hakama. Maybe that Batman costume helped convince him that somebody in the family needed to learn how to sew properly.

I don’t have many pictures to go with these stories. I may have one of him dressed more like a ninja , but this isn’t really about Batman. It’s about a little boy and then a young man who could make his mother laugh by walking across a room in black, striking a ridiculous pose, looking her straight in the eye and saying two words.

It’s about the day we found treasure in somebody else’s trash.

It’s about a homemade costume with ears that looked suspiciously feline, worn by a boy who didn’t care because, for that little while, he felt like Batman.

Gerred would be 45 years old on September 5.  I suspect he would still have had opinions about who wore the suit best. And I know that if the moment were just right, he might still have walked over, raised that arm above his head, looked me rivet eye to rivet eye and said:

“I’m Batman.”
And I think my heart would have laughed exactly the same way.❤️

​

Nothing by chance…

​Sometimes a young girl has been told a story so often that she feels like she lived it herself. Such is this tale of how my grandparents met. At one time I was lucky enough to have a little pink corduroy diary written in the up-and-down, spiky handwriting of my gramma. Minnie Samantha Syester was 19 years old when she traveled with her sister-in-law Lula to visit with Lula‘s husband and gramma‘s brother Jimmy. I have no idea how they made the trip from Brazil, Indiana, to Louisville, Kentucky, but the heart of the story begins in Louisville. The two young women took a tram through Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville with instructions to arrive at the barracks or tent of my uncle. Then fate, Kismet, God, chance, coincidence stepped in, and these two accidentally got off the tram at the wrong corner. Lost in a sea of soldiers and identical buildings, I’m sure my grandma was overwhelmed. That’s when my Paw-paw , Emanuel Herrington, stepped up to be a courteous, young gentleman.

My grandfather decided he would like to help these two lost women, and he accompanied them to find Jimmy Syester waiting somewhere in his own tent or barrack. However, my grandfather didn’t stop there. Emanuel went that extra mile and lingered while the three others met, hugged, exchanged  news of the family, and decided to go have some supper at a local eating place. Well, yes, my grandfather believed he could. That is, he waited long enough for them to finally include him in their nightly plans. According to the little diary, Minnie and Emmanuel talked long into the night.  The camp was very near the Ohio River, so they walked down beside the water and watched the moon rise over the countryside. My grandma wrote that they fell in love that night.

There is no record of the two corresponding, visiting, or seeing each other until September 1, 1919. On that day Emmanuel Herrington arrived in Centerpoint, Indiana, and he must have asked my gramma to marry him that day. The two wandered off from the rest of her family, boarded a mail hack, and headed into the little town in Indiana. Wandering still, they looked for a judge who said he could marry them right then. Inside the judge’s chambers, my grandparents discovered they needed something. They needed witnesses, and of course,they had left an entire family at home. So they had none. The judge stepped out of his home and into the alley behind, and he called down the street to two men who were unloading coal for the city. Well, yes, the two strangers agreed to be witnesses for my grandparents – coal dust and all. 

I used to have the large, beautiful marriage certificate they acquired that day. Grandma and Pawpaw, Mr. and Mrs. Emmanuel Herrington, returned to my grandma‘s childhood kitchen. Here my gramma expressed just a tiny bit of understanding for her own mother. She wrote that during supper her younger brother found the marriage license rolled into the pocket of Pawpaw‘s coat. He flashed the wedding certificate around through the hands of her family, and my great grandmother, Candace Valera Morgan Syester, began to cry. This woman with the beautiful name was no doubt crying because she missed the wedding, she didn’t know my grandfather, she understood that the couple would probably move to Missouri, and it was just too big of a surprise for a daughter to keep from her mother. 

Gramma and Pawpaw lived in Moberly, Missouri, for a while before moving to Terre Haute, Indiana for many years. My mother was born in Terre Haute, and my grandfather hauled ice for the Home Ice Company there. Finally, when my mom was in her senior year of high school, the family moved to Excello area to be with Emmanuel‘s family in Jacksonville, Missouri, where they lived the rest of their lives on a farm with cattle, chickens and eventually a darling little granddaughter named Gayla. Minnie and Emmanuel were married until his death in 1971.

So … whether or not a person believes in love it first sight, Kismet, or a Divine Plan, I certainly have a story that fills all the blanks. Getting off a horse-drawn tram a stop or two  early changed my life by allowing two people to fall in love. No wonder I’m such a romantic. Happy Anniversary , Gramma and Pawpaw.

Never worked and never will

It’s back-to-school time again.

The buses roll along dusty country roads.First-day pictures appear everywhere—little children stand on porches with backpacks almost as big as they are, holding signs announcing a new grade, while mothers and grandmothers wonder how another summer disappeared so quickly.

And every year at about this time, some part of me goes back to school, too.

This year, I found myself remembering a story I first read when I was probably seven or eight years old. It was called “Never Worked and Never Will,” by Margaret Wise Brown—the same Margaret Wise Brown who wrote Goodnight Moon.

I had no idea who she was then. I only knew I loved that story.
It was about an old woodcarver named Jim Bailey who made wooden ducks and wild geese. Above the door of his shop hung a sign:

NEVER WORKED AND NEVER WILL.

That sign puzzled people because Jim Bailey worked all day. He carved and painted and made beautiful things with his hands. Children watched him and wondered how a man who worked so hard could possibly claim that he had never worked a day in his life.
Eventually, some of the children understood his secret.
He loved what he was doing so much that, to him, it did not feel like work.
You can read Margaret Wise Brown’s story here: Never Worked and Never Will⁠

That little story caught my imagination in a way I could never have explained at seven years old.

I remember choosing it when our class was asked to speak at a PTA program for our parents. We were supposed to tell about a book or story we especially enjoyed about school.

I chose Never Worked and Never Will.
Unfortunately, when it was my turn to speak, I also chose to giggle.
I have a vague memory that a boy nearby started it, and apparently I was highly susceptible to contagious laughter that evening. My mother was not amused. To the best of my recollection, that may have been my first and last episode as a public giggler
But I never forgot the story. 

Many years later, when I was asked to say a few words at my first retirement party, I remembered that old woodcarver again.
By then I had spent years in a classroom. Teaching had certainly required effort. There had been long days, papers and plans, meetings, problems to solve, children to worry about, lessons to invent, and more work brought home than I could ever count.
But I had loved it.

And I realized that somehow I had managed to live the life that had appealed so deeply to that little girl reading about Jim Bailey.
I ended my retirement remarks by remembering his sign.
After all those years of teaching, I could say that I had been fortunate enough to spend my working life doing something I loved.
So, in Jim Bailey’s sense of the words, I have never worked.
And since that happened to be my retirement day, I supposed I never will.
I still love that idea.

Retirement and age have changed what I am able to do, and these days accomplishments are considerably smaller than they once were. But I think the old lesson still holds.

There is something wonderful about finding the things that make us lose track of the distinction between work and pleasure—the things we make, teach, write, grow, mend, cook, crochet, arrange, learn, or share simply because something inside us comes alive while we are doing them.

Maybe that is why, after all these years, I still remember an old man carving wooden ducks in a story from an elementary-school reader.
He knew something worth learning very young:

A good life is not necessarily a life without effort.

Sometimes we live a life filled with endeavors that we love. For me, teaching proved to be just that.
So I never worked and I never will!

For those of you who are lucky enough to be headed back to school or hugging a child who’s looking forward to a day in the classroom, have a great year.

Under the August moon… Where memories bloom

​The little park that holds a lifetime…

The focus begins on the moon. It has watched oceans and mountains, cities that never sleep, lonely stretches of Prairie, and little towns that hardly anyone outside Missouri has ever heard of. Then it begins its slow descent slipping past the clouds, finding Missouri, finding Macon County, coming to rest on one little city park in Bevier, Missouri. To a stranger, it’s just a park. A band stand. Grass. During most of the year a person can stand there and honestly wonder how Bevier Homecoming could ever fit inside it. It doesn’t seem possible that one city block can hold carnival rides, Nashville entertainers, family reunions, class reunions, parades, baby shows, lawn chairs, politicians, hamburgers by the thousands, and nearly everyone who has ever loved this little coal mining town. 

And yet, every August, that’s exactly what happens.

That’s one kind of Homecoming magic. The other kind takes a little longer to discover. If we sit beneath that August moon long enough, something begins to happen. At first we simply notice who’s there this year. Friends wave from across the park; children dart between the rides; teenagers circle the midway flirting a little, pretending not to notice one another. The smell of onions on Homecoming hamburgers drifts through the warm evening air, and a country song floats over the loudspeaker. Then, without realizing it, we stop looking with our eyes. We begin looking with memory’s heart. We don’t just see who is there. We see who used to be there. —The grandma digging through her purse for another dollar for one more ride. A friend who quietly hands your little boy a whole roll of ride tickets. The teacher who always worked beside you in the homecoming stand. Some are gone now, and some are sitting only a few rows away. Under that moon, time gets wonderfully confused, and the little park becomes larger than life. Homecoming doesn’t simply gather the people this year, but it gathers every version of ourselves that ever came before.

The Homecoming begins days before anyone hears the music. Carnival trucks rumble into town, and giant rides arrive, folded into impossible – looking puzzles of steel. One by one the rides unfold until the Midway takes shape. Workers string lights, and extension cords snake across the grass. We can barely wait to see this extravagant festival finished. The “Welcome Home” banner goes up over the stage.

Away from the park … Homecoming begins with brunches in small cafés, family reunions spilling out of restaurants, and classmates standing around, laughing over stories they have told 100 times. Around the community groups decorate floats, parade cars, bicycles, and little trucks. Many times children are already counting the tickets in their pockets.

The natural order of growing up can be explained by the way children navigate the Midway at the Homecoming. At first children walk with their parents. A few years later, parents  congregate nearby while their children go from ride to ride— within eyesight. Much later parents tell those children that they can just check back every hour. Eventually those little “toddlers” miraculously start arriving at Homecoming in their own cars, and they drift over to see their parents who are sitting in lawn chairs and bleachers in the crowd. 

Like moths to a flame, people come to the Homecoming for many reasons. Sometimes it’s the carnival, sometimes the parade, sometimes the Nashville performers. Many come because it’s the one weekend every year the family can count on being together.

The stage has welcomed some wonderful entertainers through the years: “Little” Jimmy Dickens, TG Shepherd, Ronnie McDowell, Kitty Wells,— others whose songs became part of the soundtrack of our summers. Many of those performers came to Bevier and almost became part of our families. They smiled, visited, signed autographs, laughed with people, and made everyone feel glad to be there. Just a very few acted as though they were doing our little town a favor by showing up. People remember which was which, and kindness has a much longer memory than fame. 

However, if I’m being perfectly honest… The greatest entertainer ever to walk across that stage never had his name on a poster. He was just five years old. On the night of that performance the official program for the evening had ended, but homecoming wasn’t finished. Homecoming never really ends when the last concert is over because many crowds stay, sit in lawn chairs or on the bleachers, and talk until the wee hours of the morning. Their children run themselves nearly to exhaustion. We can all remember little toddlers stretched out on the hard, wooden bleachers, a carefully tucked sweater spread over them, the dew gently falling on their sleeping faces while the grown-ups laughed and visited beneath the stars. On this particular night my little hot, sweaty boy wandered up the steps of the grandstand and ventured out center stage.  My little boy reached for the microphone, and then we realized no one had turned that off. Suddenly, clear as a bell, rang the voice of Bruce Springsteen.

“Born… In the USA…”

Now, I can’t carry a tune to any recognizable conclusion, but my son could. Even then, he wasn’t pretending to be a singer. He simply was one. He settled himself right in the middle of that great big stage as though he’d been performing there all his life. Then he sat down, crossed one little ankle over his knee, sang with complete confidence.  when the chorus came, he stretched the microphone toward 30 or more grown adults.

He boldly sang— “Born…”

We naturally responded— “In the USA!”

He grinned. A little louder. “Born… “

“… In the USA!” Soon every one of us was singing backup for one little boy who had us completely eating out of the palm of his hand. For years afterward Homecoming never let my son live this down. As he grew older my son was a wonderful, friendly, optimistic young man, but he was also just private enough that he probably would’ve been perfectly happy if everyone had forgotten about that night, but nobody ever did. He told me he couldn’t walk 5 feet through homecoming without somebody laughing and saying, “Hey! Aren’t you that little Bruce Springsteen?” 

The reputation of a homecoming hamburger has grown through the years to dynamic proportions. The concession stand is a legend in itself. If you’ve never wrapped, cooked, or sold a homecoming hamburger, you’ve missed one of the finest examples of organization you’ll ever see. Workers in the little kitchen may line up 30 hamburgers in wax paper, place in the warmer, stand back and think that they have things covered. Then someone says that they’ll take 12. Another voice announces they will take five, and somebody reaches in and announces that they have sold four more. Looking down, the worker realizes that 30 hamburgers have completely disappeared in a flash. 

I worked in the kitchen with fellow teachers on Saturdays after the big parade. It was blistering hot inside that screened kitchen the health department required, and by afternoon we all looked as though we had been cooked right along with hamburgers. But I’ll tell you something.

Theoretically – and I’m only speaking theoretically – stepping into that walk-in cooler for a moment with an icy cold Diet Coke in one hand and a hot Homecoming hamburger fresh off the grill in the other hand might have rivaled just about any vacation I can imagine. Only in theory, of course!

At night the lights come on across the Midway, and Homecoming settles into its evening rhythm. The Ferris Wheel turns against the sky, and children carry prizes nearly as big as they are. Wednesday night brings an ice cream social. Thursday night delivers local entertainment, the queen contest, little Mr. and Miss contest and other delights. Friday and Saturday bring Nashville entertainment. 

Many years ago my little gramma celebrated a birthday during Homecoming. She announced that her big desire was to go see “Little” Jimmy Dickens perform on stage in Bevier, so we set off with our lawn chairs to make that happen. I thought we’d leave after the first concert, but Gramma had other ideas, and we stayed until after the final drawing. My gramma, Minnie Herrington, was not much over 4 foot 11. By the time this particular Homecoming came around, she was well into her 80s, and we would’ve understood if the night had worn her out. My gramma had other plans. As we drove home, she announced that she believed she could stand a little birthday cake. I had the cake at my house, so we stopped and enjoyed it, and then she saw her presents in the corner of the room. Grandma decided it would be OK to open some gifts. Now grandma always took her pains opening presents, and she never hurried. I think we finished Homecoming birthday celebration about 3 o’clock in the morning.

Bevier knows how to put on quite a parade. On Saturdays an hour long extravaganza has just about every kind of entry you could hope for. We find floats displaying hours of work, hometown tractors, the fire truck, queens waving from convertibles, and decorated cars put together with imagination and inspiration. My son was always thinking of a new way to appear in the parade. As a toddler he and his cousin dressed in lederhosen and traveled in a little wagon covered in grapes to display their German heritage. One year we created a posterboard costume that looked very much like a ladybug, but my son insisted it was a “boy bug.” Walking with him through the homecoming parade route was a hot, overwhelming task. Most years he talked my dad and his into creating a vehicle wrapped around our lawn mower. He was Radar with the MASH Jeep; and he drove the “Heavy Chevy.”

Homecoming makes me think of lifelong friends, and I have to remember my teacher /lifelong buddy Doralee. She might be sitting at a brunch before the Homecoming with a familiar happy smile. She might be decorating her Camaro for the upcoming parade, or she might be displaying a ribbon proudly after riding with former students in the parade. And she might just be laughing and flirting in a flapper-fringed dress with Ronnie McDowel on the homecoming stage. People who know her story understand why these pictures make me smile.

In just a few days that old moon will look down again over the whole park as it becomes a little square of light. Only the moon and those of us who have caught the Homecoming spirit will realize how much life has been lived inside that little square. We really have to belong and have the spirit to understand. Years ago Doralee had the privilege of traveling with her students to Europe— Paris, London. As a new teacher she took a group of Bevier students to places people dream about seeing their whole lives. One evening those students were standing in Paris, France. The Eiffel Tower glittered above them, and people from all over the world surrounded. A hush was quietly developing within the group, and Doralee and her sister could not understand the sadness that seemed to issue from these young people. One of the kids looked at them and said something that stayed with all of us forever.— “You know we’re missing the Bevier Homecoming for this.”—  Imagine that? Standing in one of the world‘s greatest cities— and wishing you were back in that tiny park in Bevier, Missouri. I guess that makes perfect sense to those of us who know.

Every year babies make their very first trip to ride a merry-go-round, and little boys probably carry plastic swords they won at the carnival. Unlucky goldfish try to survive in their plastic bags until they can go home and swim in bowls of their own. Teenagers quietly become young adults and propose on the Ferris Wheel. Someday they’ll come back with children of their own.

Very soon Homecoming visitors will hear an old country song, catch the smell of a grilled hamburger, or see a banner stretched across the stage. Without warning they’ll be surrounded by people who really aren’t standing there anymore. That’s when they’ll understand Homecoming was never just something to attend. It quietly became part of who we are. Even if some of us don’t attend any more in person, we still go there with our spirit. We see old classmates, former students, friends, and family. We see people who are still there, and we see people we miss with all our hearts. Somehow they’re all there together, and that’s the miracle of Homecoming. It’s a place that somehow became a container for a lifetime. A place where one city block can hold generations, and yesterday walks comfortably beside today. All of it fits together under the same August sky and that old moon. And under that August moon, nothing else really matters. For one wonderful weekend, we all go home again.