Sharing Our Childhoods With Our Kids

Sparklers were a staple of my Fourth of July childhoods, but not for my kids, as we live in tinder-abundant Colorado. So we bought out the store in Iowa and lit sparklers every night.

My family and I spent the last two weeks “back home,” “back home” being central Iowa and eastern Nebraska where my husband and I spent our formative years.  Our kids think it’s weird when their parents talk like this because to them, home is where the puppy is.  Where Dad and Mom grew up (read:  no puppy…) can’t possibly be “home.”

Ironically, my daughter challenged me to read and finish a book on the plane trip back to Iowa:  On the Way Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the diary of the trek she and Almanzo and Rose took from DeSmet, Dakota Territory, to their final home in Mansfield, Missouri.  Ironic not only because we were indeed on the way home, but also because Laura and her family were traveling through some of the very territory we would be visiting…eastern Nebraska.

Laura made it very clear she did not like Nebraska.  The “why” wasn’t certain; Nebraska did have its share of failing crops but had bountiful yields as well, like the other places she and her family traveled through.  She seemed to appreciate the roving metropolis of Lincoln.  Their trek was uneventful.  But like Nebraska she did not, and because of this I won’t be recommending this book to my mother-in-law, who was born and raised in the Cornhusker State and maintains that it is “God’s Country.”

Others will make a friendly argument against this status (Go, Iowa Hawkeyes!) but eastern Nebraska must have been a wonderful place to grow up.  Just ask my mother-in-law.  Or my husband, who spent many, many holidays and summers there.  He proudly took the kids on a short tour around the places he loved as a kid visiting his grandparents; I tagged along, as it had been decades since I’d seen these places myself.

The rainy summer certainly helped.  But no matter what, Nebraska is really pretty.  My husband’s grandparents final resting place overlooks a breathtaking river valley; a patchwork of pristine fields leads to the Mighty Missouri and you can see a thunderstorm brewing in eastern Iowa from there.  Further west, the gently rolling hills of corn and beans seem an endless carpet of Astroturf.  When the wind blows, a shamrock green wave rustles the crops.  It’s gorgeous.  Really, really amazing.  I think even my tweens were a bit captivated by the scenery.

The site of the family farm near Craig, Nebraska. Look at that sky!

I always loved stories and photographs of my parents’ childhoods (still do!), hearing about their pets and the things that got them into trouble and marveling at what a super-tall 8th grader my dad was.  My own kids crave tales of my husband’s and my time growing up, too.  But seeing their faces as they took in the sights was truly priceless.***  They asked questions.  Where was the corn crib you left Aunt J in when you were kids?  Where’s the Dairy Queen?  Didn’t Grandma get ready for her wedding to Grandpa in the church across the street from this one?  

The kids really were listening to the stories we’ve told them.  They absorbed the images on musty, yellowing pages of old photo albums…you know, the ones that secure pictures with black photo corners.  They love the stories of the inconceivable possibility that Dad, Mom and their grandparents were actually kids once.  And maybe that’s why they listen so intently.  That these weird “old people” who listen to strange music and drive totally uncool minivans and insist they just try the mashed cauliflower might, just might, get what it’s like to be their age.

The door was locked, but we could see the sanctuary from the window…it looks exactly like the pictures of my in-laws wedding more than 50 years ago.

***(I’ll never forget my daughter’s face when I showed her my first-grade classroom.  I went and stood on a grassy lawn where the building once stood, and she was horrified…believing we held school outside!)