If I’m being totally honest, I don’t like to write about home, other than the one I’ve created in my here and now. I spent a lifetime designing it, dreaming about it, and wishing it into existence. My right now is the most centered and “at home” I have ever been. But once, a long time ago, there was another home, and it was grand. It took place on a farm in Southern Illinois where 11 cousins had their run of hundreds of acres. My memories of my weekends and summers spent on my family’s farm are the best of my childhood, and those are the stories I tell the girls as they sit on the edge of their beds at night, begging for just “one more cousin story”. Oh, my precious cousins. We were reckless. We were clever. But most importantly, we were completely unhindered by adult supervision.

Since having children of my own, I’ve struggled to get back to this place I once called home. Our early years with children were challenging, and just packing up and heading over to the farm became an exercise in exhaustion and stamina. After losing my maternal Grandmother without warning, I couldn’t bear to watch the slow decline of my paternal Grandmother. The years she didn’t recognize me were heartbreaking, and then Greg and I proceeded to lose 5 Grandparents in 5 years. The farmhouse where my Grandmother made homemade peach ice cream, cherry-apple pies (my favorite of all pies), jam from her gardens, waffles with hot fruit…had to be taken down, after being in my family for over a hundred years. I thought I could survive anything after my parents divorce, but I didn’t anticipate how I’d feel when I would inevitably lose a gigantic portion of what I had left. My heart simply unraveled.

But I didn’t forget my home, and my home did not forget me. My closest cousin, Jayme, called every year, asking me to come. Come Lori. Bring the girls. Let’s pick berries. Or peaches. Or corn. Come home, where the food grows just a little bit sweeter in the heat and humidity of being near St. Louis. Let’s share fried biscuits and apple butter, and let our girls play until they fall over from giggles and get a few bruises from their ridiculous antics. Just as we did through our summers, running in the bean fields, turning our bare feet into mud shoes. Jayme doesn’t live on the farm, but my family still does, and her home is not so very far away from it. Just walking into Jayme’s house is enough. When I’m there with her, I’m home.

And so 3 summers ago, I did. I did go home. And then last year…again…I packed up the girls and made the drive. And this year. Yes. It was a must. The blackberries were in, and home was calling my name. We picked up Jayme and her daughter Jordyn, and drove straight to the fields. Indiana blackberries are tart. The heat just isn’t high enough to turn them sweet. But near Missouri, they are gigantic, and if you pick the ones that fall off in your hands, it’s a flavor very hard to describe. Sweet and earthy, and it rounds out in your mouth, almost like a wine. I can pick strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries for hours, without putting a single one in my mouth. But not blackberries. I was at a fruit buffet, and we all walked out with our faces stained in purple.

I have a deep peace watching Sara and Kelly watch Jayme pick fruit and chat about what we’ll cook when we get home. When speaking about the food that grows in our Midwest, she talks with an enthusiasm identical to mine. She gently instructs on proper picking, how to determine ripeness, sharing hilarious stories about the scrapes the 11 of us got into so many years ago. When we got home, I ran out to her garden and picked some green tomatoes for frying. Jayme picked some zucchini and showed me how to turn it into spaghetti. The girls sat contentedly in the kitchen, stuffing their faces with fresh blackberries while we chatted. Watching us cook, my children realized I came from somewhere quite real, and I didn’t just happen out of thin air. Parts of my childhood are quite complicated. My past with Midwestern produce is not.

Jayme has always challenged me to live fully in my skin. I like that she pushes me to try new things. In our childhood, that meant tearing through fields at 30 mph on an ATV. In my adult years, she just wanted me TO GET IN THE CAR AND DRIVE HOME WITH MY KIDS. She went easy on my that first year. We picked peaches and let the kids swim in the pool. I laugh at how hard that was for me…packing up and making a drive with kids without Greg…a drive I’ve made so many times, I could do it with my eyes closed. I’ve traveled the entire world, but one Special Needs kid and a few twists in the old life plan, and my internal sense of security just crumbled to pieces. Jayme simply wasn’t having it. Those fruit pies weren’t going to make themselves! This year, we went big. Time for me to return to the Lori who was the first to try our homemade tight rope, circa 1980. Did I make it? NO. Do I still have the scars? YES. But I was in the game, baby. Once, long ago, I was a contender.

After picking day, we hit The City Museum in St. Louis. My best description is that it’s a 10-story Tim Burton movie set. It’s not really a museum, but it is filled to the brim with old things. Take an old building, rescue as much industrial salvage equipment humanly possible, and then it into a very unsafe-looking indoor-outdoor playground for children. Tunnels that drop out of the floor and go where adults don’t fit. Conveyor belts turned into 2-story slides. Hundreds of children disappearing into ceilings, with what appears to be countless entrances and exits for as far as the eyes can see. It’s visual cacophony. It’s WILD. It’s most certainly the coolest playground I will ever see. See that web of wood above? That’s not for display, that’s for PLAY.

It threw me off my balance for a moment to watch my children disappear into a ceiling, only to reappear many minutes later, 2 rooms over. Or to jump down a slide with no idea where it exited. 2 floors down? 3 floors down? And just for kicks, one goes 10 floors down! But after a few minutes, watching hundreds of kids filling their souls with joy, I HAD to let them go. I joke I never leave home without my ninja. Greg centers me on adventures and I feel safe when Greg is near. How odd that I could do this alone…but then it hit me…I’m not alone! Jayme was my original ninja! Yes, of course. As a self-proclaimed non-ninja, I have spent a lifetime packing the ninja.

The last day was the real challenge: Six Flags. Open to close, water park included. Kelly and I are amusement park wipe-outs, after our own little “wipe out” so many years ago. Knowing this day lie ahead, I prayed to God to get me through it. I knew I could dig deep and rise above, because the old me LOVED amusement parks. But Kelly? How as that going to go? Kelly remembered to pack her ninja, just as I instructed. Jayme doesn’t push. She doesn’t bribe. She doesn’t bully. She just calmly and quietly LIVES. Out loud. And Kelly followed. By the end of the day, she had a list of rides she could not LIVE WITHOUT, and some she would NEVER RIDE AGAIN!  But most importantly, she fully took part in the day, and had a blast. I had zero-point-zero anxiety, watching my kids ride roller coasters, and fly down water slides. Sara spent her St. Louis week in ADHD-heaven. Having no fear serves one well at amusement parks with rides named “The Tornado”, and “Pandemonium”. It brought me such happiness to see her exploring her limits as well.

So my apologies for the quiet on the blog last week. We spent very precious time with my family. We made wickedly awesome cousin memories. We tried new things. We had new adventures. But most importantly, my heart healed just a little bit more as I connected to the memory of being from somewhere. I do have a home. It smells like corn growing in the sweet humidity of summer. It’s technicolor at all times of the day. It feels like the laughter that comes from being known, and it tastes like blackberries. Godspeed my friends. Godspeed.