Busy Hands Homestead

I have my hands on the steering wheel, flying up highway 44, driving in and out of the past and present. I am feeling the wind on my face, seeing sunflowers and laughing out loud at hearing Afro Man for the first (and possibly the last) time. In reality, the windows are rolled up, the fields are green and the news is on. On this road I battled my fear of traffic, shed tears in pouring rain, snailed through blowing snow and endured the vertigo of newly paved asphalt and an equally black sky. I drove up and down this stretch of highway hundreds of time because, well, I was in love. My first love. My first for almost everything – my first time getting drunk, my first time to lie about where exactly I was spending the night, my first cross country road trip complete with food poisoning from gas station food... but, as with most great first loves, this one was followed by equally great first heart break. The only cure for which, I admit with embarrassment, was sit...

“Do you want to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, I ask Ivory. “No. I only sing songs about animals.” And a new song alights. This one is about lions. For some reason my little girl will not sing nursery rhymes. She will ask for specific ones (at times), fill in missing words (at times), but will not sing a nursery rhyme.  Just last night she was sitting on the edge of the bed in my grandmother's basement singing to herself. “Happy Changes, Happy Changes, Happy Changes”. I have no idea where this song came from, but this is a classic Ivory song. She sings the moment. Happy changes indeed.  We just spent the day visiting with my Oma. Eating her wonderful home cooked food.. walking around her neighborhood and just enjoying her company. We are on a road trip. We left behind the mountains, drove across the plains, saw a few raindrops, a lasting rainbow, a sunrise and a sunset. We drove past bent over workers lumping potatoes into bags. We drove past bags of onio...