I am the prodigal child. I leave, I berate her, I ignore her. She waits for me. Her wicked ice storms blast my homecomings. Her oppressive summer heat makes me sweat and forces my clothes to cling to my body. All four seasons – to the extremes.

I have come home from the desert in the spring and have been overjoyed at green trees over hills and valleys from my feet to the horizon.

Floating in her dirty rivers and lakes, I have connected with my friends – no matter how stretch marked from children or grey haired or calico haired – no matter how long its been since the last time – my huckleberry friends all come home to each other.

I bitch at her snowfall that turns to ice. (Always, ALWAYS on my birthday weekend.) Grateful the snow will melt in a few days so I can bitch about the mud it leaves behind.

April and May bring the lilacs that remind me of my grandma and our lilac bush. Once a year, she gives me that connection to that woman gone six years now.

Morels fried in cracker crumbs. Catfish fried in cornmeal.

Summer apples – picked warm from the tree, pesticide buffed off on my shorts and eaten right there. Pecans all over my grandma’s yard. Climbing on the roof with my cousins because the pecans on the roof needed to be picked up too.

Homecoming parades full of high school bands and Shriners on their little trikes and bikes and cars.

Hearing the football game from a mile away on a Friday night. Hearing the speedway from MILES away on a Saturday night.

Winding roads, trees, rocks, lakes. Seeing the forest and the trees.

Campfires and songs. Waking in a cabin up from a river bank, covered in thick morning foggy dew.

Stealth bombers flying overhead as a common daily event.

I went all the way to Germany and loved it best because it reminded me of home.

This home. Where all my ancestors settled over a hundred fifty years ago. Old country cemeteries where I recognize most of the names.

Tiny towns of 300 people. Gravel county roads marked by letters and spotted with Century Farms. Numbered highways surrounded by corn. Adding in extra time for a drive because you never know when you’ll get stuck behind a tractor. The little twinge of decadent guilt when passing a Mennonite horse carriage.

Kansas City and the Plaza Lights and high end shopping.

Springfield and two-thirds of my colleges attended.

M-I-Z-Z-O-U. Jayhawk/Tiger rivalry trash talk at every family function. Royals, Chiefs and Rams.

The Cardinals who kick some serious Game Six Ass!

She ain’t sexy or glamorous. She’s plain spoken and Show Me attituded. I’ve fought her my whole life. Now here I am.

I am Missouri’s daughter. She is my home. As summer is beginning to give up its fight, I realize how ready I am to just rest in her.

She is my home, and with all her flaws and beauty, she is enough. Just like her daughter.

(photos link to original images)

I knew of the Butterfly Lover and the Man Who Loved Her only by reputation. We went to their church, he was retired from the university and he was well like and respected for looking out for the good of many rather than the good of himself only. (A rarity in this den of higher education.)

The Butterfly Lover was in her early seventies – but she was old at her age. She’d had strokes, she had Bells Palsy, her voice never really recovered and was extremely difficult to understand – and on top of that, she had “emotional lability”.

What’s that? you ask?

Imagine the most hormonal day you’ve ever had, exhausted, stressed out, and finally you burst into tears. That’s more or less what it’s like – except that you could be talking about the weather and burst into sobs … but not feel sad. Can also manifest in inappropriate laughter – but the Butterfly Lover sobbed and sobbed.

I worked with her for 18 months. Some weeks they would be on vacation, so we would make up with double sessions the next week. I was getting hours, the Man Who Loved Her was getting a break, the Butterfly Lover was getting companionship – we were all winning.

We would do vocal exercises and then we would work on the computer – she was into genealogy, so I would take her to sites so we would have things to talk about. Not sure what it says of me that I had a hobby in common with a little white haired lady, but it served us well.

Turns out she was the grandma of someone I’d gone to high school with. One of those people who I was never BFFs with, but we kept running into each other – much like this. This opened the door to have the Butterfly Lover email her grandchildren.

She loved butterflies (which you’ve probably figured out by now). She loved the color purple. She loved her family.

Her husband took excellent care of her, right down to doing his best to draw on her eyebrows, every day.

They bought me a necklace for graduation. A heart with my name and butterflies on it. A perfect kind of grandparent gift. I wore it my first day of work – but inside my shirt

The next spring my grandma died. On the way back home, I decided that going to see the Butterfly Lover and the Man Who Loved Her would make me feel better.

When I got home and opened the newspaper, the Butterfly Lover’s obituary was in there. I could only helplessly cuss at the newsprint.

I did see her. Alone in the funeral home. I had enough time to step in before we left for home. It was the first time I saw her healthy. Her face was even and symmetrical. There were no tremors. Next to the casket was a huge arrangement of flowers in the shape of a butterfly. There were family photos of her with her loved ones and for the first time I really understood the tragedy of her last years. Those strokes robbed her and her family of a vibrant lady. I think I’m glad I didn’t know, that I couldn’t compare. To me she was just the Butterfly Lover. Not what was left of the Butterfly Lover.

The next year, the Man Who Loved Her died. He’d been in decent health, but I think his heart died with her.

I saw my classmate this last weekend at our reunion. We stood in the middle of the banquet room and she told me about the last hours of her grandma’s life. We talked about how important they were to us. We hugged more than once in this conversation. Changing the subject because we were a few sentences away from sitting on the floor and having a good cry.

She introduced me to her brother downtown, in a smoky loud bar. He hugged me and didn’t let go. I thought maybe he was copping a feel, but when he let me go he said, “My grandpa meant more to me…. did more things for me than I will ever know….” So he was at least thinking of the the Butterfly Lover and Man Who Loved Her while copping a feel.

They were hard conversations to have. But I’m grateful for having them. Grateful for the chance to have mattered.