Big TEXAS Love (part 2)

(cont. from part 1) I have strong memories of making the two hour drive from Houston to Hochheim, mesmerized by the orderly rows of cornfields, cotton, and whatever else farmers had a mind to grow. I was always captivated by the tidy rows flicking past, flick-flick-flick, until I was sick, causing an unscheduled stop for a good roadside vomit. I remember the smell of hay, as it was freshly cut and drying in the sun. I recall the hearty smell of cows and horses being towed in trailers just ahead of our car. I remember the excitement of being caught behind farmers riding their tractors up to this field, or that field. And I remember traveling behind large farming equipment – hay balers, corn harvesters – being delivered to someone’s farm. They were often too hard to overtake on the curling, slightly pregnant hills and required patience until the next opportunity to pass. Sometimes you couldn’t pass until after the next small town.

Every small town we rolled through brought new hope for a bathroom stop and the possibility of a Big Red for the road. Every town was different and the same. Dusty farming equipment sleepily strewn about, waiting to be useful. A gas station, sometimes two, possibly a small grocery store or a hardware store would line the main highway that cut through those graceful hamlets. Painted signs had all been uniformly faded by the hot Texas sun and drifted lazily back in forth in the occasional breeze that ebbed its way up from the coastline. Memories of driving through these towns always play back to me like an old movie from my past.

But one of my favorite memories is the parade of roadside flowers. During the springtime, bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes would blanket the roadside hills in a quilt of explosive color. Lavender and white buttercups – my mother said these were weeds – stood as proud guardians of the Texas bluebonnets. Families of tourists, or maybe these were just proud Texans, would stop along the roadsides and snap pictures. Snap-click-snap-click! Babies in fields of periwinkle blues and red-orange blossoms are a happy sight! “Bluebonnet sitting,” I always thought to myself as we rolled by slowly, making our way behind another green tractor pulling a harvester. We never did stop and take our own pictures, and years later this would prompt me to stop and place my own baby son amongst the bluebonnets. That picture sits on my dresser, his bald baby head poking up soft and pink among all those periwinkle bonnets. He has a look of utter amazement on his face – an earthly cherub among blue Texas angels!

I am filled with ripe memories that spill over and splash into my present life. My pink-headed baby boy has grown into a fine nine-year old son who travels with me every summer to perform for children at Texas libraries. He’s already seen a lot of dusty Texas towns and seems to enjoy the sights as much as I do. I secretly know that he is storing up memories for his own children. He, too, gets excited about being stuck behind an occasional tractor or seeing the bluebonnets burst at the first sign of spring. He wants to stop and take another picture in the bluebonnets, but the last few dry years haven’t brought us across a field exploding in fine Texas blue.

He thinks the corroded, farming equipment will one day be valuable – I think he’s right, but only as the rusty antique of a lost farm. He thinks one day he will borrow my cousin’s big, red tractor and plow fields for all the little old ladies who have lost their families. He says he will plant corn and bluebonnets in their empty fields and this will make them happy, seeing their fields, once again alive with promise. I marvel that someone who is only nine, and a city boy to boot, has such magical plans. But then I realize with a lurch of my Texas heart, that he has Texas running through his veins like gold. His heart is tangled with the roots of bluebonnets, just as mine is with honeysuckle. He can’t believe how blue the sky can be here. I tell him it’s bluer here than in Chicago, and I know this to be completely true. He says he will one day leave Houston after he’s been an Astros player, an astronaut and the President of the United States, and move to the country where he will plow up the fields all around my parent’s and grandparent’s houses. I believe that he will and new dreams will grow.

Sometimes when visiting my parents in Hochheim, we lay on their driveway late at night, mother and son, side by side. We first shine the flashlight on the drive to make sure there are no scorpions. Then we lay back, heads together on the still hot cement, and take turns looking up at the Texas stars. A giant dome of stars stares back at us and we take turns gazing through a pair of binoculars to bring them closer. The stars cloak the sky from east to west, north to south and we feel like happy bugs under a glass dome. We are making memories.

My cousin – the one with the big, red tractor – recently wrote in an email, ironically enough, that in an age of cell phones, email, laptop computers, Jacuzzi tubs in bathrooms, professionally managed portfolios, digital cable and satellite radios in our cars, it’s really our memories of simple things that make us feel a part of something. I believe he’s hit the nail on the head with a big ole’ Texas hammer!

Texas makes me feel a part of something big. You can’t look at the vast azure sky and not feel enchanted, hopeful. A bit of my childhood leaks out each time I see bluebonnets, or stars, or cattle, or cornfields. I may travel to see other places, I may even live in other places, but there is only one place I will call home…Texas. It’s my childhood, my husband’s childhood and my son’s childhood. It leaves us filled up and in love with life. In love with each other and in love with Texas too. It’s a big love! A BIG TEXAS LOVE! ≈