My Dad has lived in Alaska his entire life. He has only been down to Ohio/Pennsylvania once, sometime around 1975. I didn't even know he'd been down there until after I got back to Michigan.
My grandfather grew up in a town called Wheatland, Pennsylvania. It's about 2 miles east of the Ohio border. It's tiny. But when I was small, my Dad used to sing me a song that went, "In a little town called Wheatland, where the Shenango River flows, the people there are dirty 'cause they never wash their clothes. They put them on in autumn, don't take them off 'til spring, 'cause there's no Chinese laundry where the Shenango River springs."
I got down to Hubbard, Ohio around midnight. My Great Aunt Hannah came to get me from the truck stop at their expressway exit and brought me back to the house. Apparently, a farm that had been in the family had been divided up between all the brothers and sisters and an entire branch of my family lives on this one little road. There are broken down cars and aging farm equipment piled up alongside the driveway, but I was comfortable with that. Since my Dad works in construction, it felt like home to me. She got me in the house and started trying to feed me. I don't know what it is about the elderly, but they aren't happy unless you're eating. And eating. And eating.
I felt a little bit awkward, but it went away pretty quickly.
When we got up the next morning, I went upstairs to visit my second and third cousins. My third cousins (who are just a few years younger than me) started showing me all around the farm. When we got back to the house, my second cousin Freddy (who is the same age as my parents) was there. When we got to talking, he kept laughing and telling me how much I was like my Dad. And that made me happy.
After a couple more hours, Aunt Hannah asked me if I wanted to see Wheatland. We got in the car and drove over there. She showed me "Sweeney Street", which was named after all the Sweeneys that lived there. She showed me where she was standing when my grandfather told her he was being sent off to World War II. She showed me where her parents used to own a grocery store. In half an hour, she gave me the Sweeney-specific history of an entire town. But the strangest part was still coming.
We drove down a little ways out of town and she pulled off to the side of the road. We got out of the car and she started walking toward a river. We stood and looked at the water for a minute and then she said, "Do you know the song? About the Shenango River?" I stared at her in disbelief and looked back at the river. It was the strangest collision of childhood fantasy and adult reality. I couldn't believe that I was standing on a bridge over the river that was part of a song I had sung as a child. I couldn't even fathom it all. But it was no wonder that the people in Wheatland never tried to wash their clothes in the river. It was muddy and mucky and gross. But still a huge part of my childhood, even though I had never seen it.
As we drove back to her house, I started to get really sad. I realized that I would never be as connected to a place as she was to that tiny town in Pennsylvania. I would never have that familiarity. I would never have that comfort. I would never have those kinds of memories.
The next day, more of my family came over and I met a lot of cousins that I'd never met before. I hadn't realized how much I missed my family until I went down there and had it again. It's amazing that people will accept you for no reason other than that the same blood is flowing through your veins. That feels really good.
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever move home to Alaska. My parents, all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles and most of my cousins live up there. But I have the sneaking suspicion that after the older group passes on, we probably won't get together as often. The monthly meetings will fade to holidays. And then they may disappear all together as the younger generation is scattered to the wind.
They say that it takes a village to raise a child. My village was my family. And I don't know what it would have been like to grow up without them.
But I don't know if my kids will have that. I won't know the circumstances of my family life until it happens. And while I'd like them to have family around, I just don't know if I'll ever move home again.
And that makes me sad, too.