my kansas roots.

To: Developers_Group; Support_Group
From: Sandra
Subject: Vacation

I will be on vacation from Wednesday, October 10 - Friday, October 12. I will be in Kansas.

Go ahead and start with the Dorothy jokes.

Sandra

For the most part, it's a good thing to work in an office where everyone can joke around. But if you're announcing your upcoming vacation in what is widely considered the most boring state in the country, you can expect all your quips and asides to come back at you.

I'm going to Kansas, maybe for the last time. Even if I do someday enter within the borders of the Sunflower State again, it won't be the same thing as "going to Kansas." See, our annual family vacations consisted of piling the whole bunch into as many vehicles required and then driving from North Carolina to Kansas. While there, we would spend several days enjoying the local, uh, attractions and visiting my maternal grandparents. Then we'd drive back. Each leg of the trip was two full days of driving, rising earlier than the sun did and arriving at our destination sometime after it had disappeared over the horizon.

People have always found our annual pilgrimages fascinating. In fact, they find the fact that I have a Kansas connection fascinating. Suddenly, I become the closest thing they've ever known of a person who came from Kansas. "I'm not from Kansas," I tell them, "My mother is from Kansas." They shrug and ask if it's really as flat as they've heard. Josh is particularly amused by it. His last two ex-girlfriends had Nicaraguan and Chinese heritage. Yeah, well, his current girlfriend is half-Kansan.

I don't know how Kansan I actually am. There is a lot of my mother in me, but how much of it is from her home state and how much of it is just her? I do claim my midwestern heritage, but I'm not sure why. I feel certain that it's a part of me, but I'm not sure which part: my skin tone, my sense of humor, my love of corn? Is it really only from all those week-long visits as a kid?

It seems now that my Kansan roots are being uprooted. My grandmother, eighty-seven years old in the shade, is moving from her gigantic farmhouse, which is mere miles from where she was born, to a tiny town in the mountains of western North Carolina. My parents are going to fetch her and bring her to her new home, vastly different from her old in that it has trees and hills and, you know, neighbors. Not a lot, and you can't see them because of the aforementioned trees, but neighbors nonetheless. She's selling the farmhouse and the barn and a chunk of the land. So even if I happen to find myself driving down a long and straight road with neverending fields on either side of me, I can't go back to the farm. I suppose I'll just be like all the other Kansas tourists. I can only assume they're from Oklahoma or Nebraska or somewhere really boring.

And, because it's my last chance, I'm taking Josh. It seems like a big deal to me, like bringing him to Thanksgiving at my parents', but times a hundred. I've watched all my siblings bring spouses through the initiation ritual of a Kansas trip. It's bonding by shared experience. I'm sorry that you don't like taking baths, but this dusty farmhouse with no showers is a part of my childhood. That decrepit barn is important to me, so take my picture in front of it before it falls down. To us kids, it's a shared family memory. Even though everyone didn't get to go every year, we all have the same idea of what going to Kansas smells and sounds and tastes like. It's a bit hard to explain to our peers, who went to the beach during their summer vacations. How can you know what it's like to be in this family if you've never been to Kansas?