Nebraska Roots

[Editor's Note: This week, in the midst of my preparation to leave for overseas, I'm excited to share one of the best short stories I've read in quite a while, written by my mom. This piece is all about our family heritage in Nebraska, where my grandfather grew up. I hope you enjoy it! I did.]

My father’s family farm was a novel to me. It was another place and time similar to Charlotte’s Web. I was a city girl from southern California, and I was nothing like Fern. Yet the few times I got Nebraska dirt under my fingernails were opportunities of discovery. The years may have altered our family farm, but the lessons I learned there were timeless.

Grandma and Grandpa Bell were strangers I knew from a black and white photograph. They were pictured next to three year old me as they witnessed the grandeur of the Pacific Ocean for the very first time. They were linked in my head to shoe boxes of homemade Christmas cookies and twin sized quilts with my name embroidered on them.

In a world where I struggled to fit into the image displayed for me to strive for, here were people who seemed to treasure me without really knowing me. Their love was evident in the quilt colors especially chosen because they were my favorites. My shoe box was wrapped and only for me, each cookie frosted and specially made with love.

Even with having spoken to these mysterious grandparents on the phone, along with being the recipient of their kind gifts, it was a shock when I finally remember meeting them. Traveling for days in the car, with my father and one sister, while listening to my mother complain about the trip was confusing to my young mind. I tried to mesh the negative remarks about country people with my prior positive associations of quilts and cookies. When I arrived, I suddenly was thrust into stardom. Over and over I was introduced as their pride and joy from California. The amazing thing was I hadn’t done anything to earn their affection.

Grandma Bell had been a pioneer of her time. Her family was limited to her husband and two children, and she chose to work outside of her home. Having birthed my father in 1917, she was not only a farmer’s wife, a full time job in itself, but also the teacher of the one room school house. She taught with my father as a toddler in her classroom. She grew and canned all their produce in see through glass jars. In addition to several others she made each of her eight grandchildren two quilts, every stitch by hand.

She was the essence of a teacher: years after retirement she still encouraged and taught me the value of seeing beauty in everything. She pointed out the complimenting of colors in a quilt and the splendor of the fall leaves. She didn’t waste anything. In the quilts I could find matching pieces that were scraps from the aprons she had made us or from my grandpa’s shirts.

My first exposure to a garden was in Nebraska with her. I loved the smell of the soil that was richly composted by her care. Grandma’s firstborn, my Aunt Eleanor, lived nearby on another farm. I distinctly remember being invited by her to help shell peas and my amazement that they didn’t come from metal cans or the frozen food section! Being sent into the garden to find a ripe tomato was the scavenger hunt I had never before experienced!

Then there were the cousins. My Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Rich had six children and four of them were girls! They were all in the kitchen with their mom and our grandma shelling the peas, laughing and working together. There was uniqueness in their interacting with one another, and I hungered for that type of intimacy with my sister.

I found it in the freedom of the Nebraska country where California city girls could relax from the pressures of being perfect like Hollywood said we should be. Grandpa Bell gave us permission to ride around in the ancient tractor with my older sister driving. I realize now he kept an eye on us as he leisurely smoked his pipe. But at the time, as a little girl, it was just my sister and me on a great adventure with not a care in the world. We drove for hours through the fields. The culmination was a trek through the cherry orchard picking fruit from the trees as we whizzed by…who could believe anything could taste so good being plucked off a tree? Didn’t cherries come in cans? How could you have so much fun outside? Who would believe that sisters could be friends?

Even in paradise there can be some thorn bushes. I discovered this when Uncle Rich, Daddy and I visited the barn to see the new litter of piglets. What might have been offensive to some held a wonder for me. The crunch of the straw beneath our feet, covering the dry crusted mud floor, was something my eyes had never beheld. I was a city gal with sidewalks and grass. To my delight was an enormous stinky sow with a dozen piglets at her side. The cutest little one had no teat to be found, and my uncle in his country ignorance declared this one to be the runt! Country ignorance because he did what a farmer had to do – not what was fashionable to a little girl. I wept for hours after hearing about the injustice to my favorite piglet. I proceeded to then punish my uncle by refusing to speak to him for the remainder of our trip. I suspect he worked too hard to even notice.

This newly discovered family from Nebraska was a different breed of people from the theys within my limited scope. My concrete sidewalk, grass yard, frozen food, clean life depended on the theys to determine my aspirations and self-worth. “They are wearing this, they are doing this, they are going here, they are staying there.” In Nebraska amongst the real soil, real food, and real life I discovered real people who enjoyed working hard. They took pride in the results of their labor and accomplishments not simply their acquirements.

Daddy always reminisced about the simple life in the country. As an executive at an aerospace corporation, it appeared he had come too far west to return. There was a time mother and he discussed the possibility of moving our family back to Nebraska. Grandma and Grandpa Bell desperately wanted the land to stay within the family. The idea wasn’t entertained very long. My father settled with planting a garden in the easement behind our backyard, but his heart always longed for the country life.

I am guessing I only visited my country family three times before my Grandmother died. Our last family summer trip was taken because we knew she wouldn’t last another. The same long ride, the same complaints, yet my innocent eleven year old heart was thrilled to be visiting again. The sadness in my Grandfather’s eyes was like a summer storm cloud hanging over the stay. I remember him emptying the basin into the garden soil after my Grandmother had vomited. The effects of cancer could not be hidden, as hard as they tried.

Even in her suffering, she was delighted with me and had kind things to say. This behavior was still baffling to me. She complimented my drawing and the use of colors together. “You could make beautiful quilts someday.” Then she took me to the parlor with the built in knick-knack cabinets on each side. She instructed my sister and me to each choose something from it to remember her by. My sister, by now a teenager, chose a beautiful crystal piece.

Still a child, in an environment with no one to pressure me, some might think I had chosen foolishly. There were a set of little cast iron people dressed in black and a small old fashioned flat iron. They were insignificant, older, and chipped. This will remind me of my grandma, I thought.

Years later, as an adult, I traveled back to the old farm: a place that awakened much of who I have become. I was surprised to find the drive long and caught myself complaining. The house still stands; now belonging to strangers and rented out. The acres of farmland are gone. Instead of row after row of corn there are now row after row of tract homes. The cherry orchard is still standing in neat and tidy rows. I am comforted by the presence of all those trees, we have a secret; they know me.

I realize now the little cast iron people dressed in black were an inexpensive keepsake that Grandma probably acquired when visiting Amish country. Yet, they were a very wise choice for me. They speak to me each day as they are displayed on the corner table. They speak of simpler times and the lessons learned in that Nebraska dirt. I can still see traces of it under my fingernails. I suspect it has become a permanent part of who I am.

What memories do you have of family when you were young? How have those experiences with the “older and wiser” generation shaped your life? Use the comments below to share your story!