May 2014

                         Forty Years in the Land of Lincoln                                                                                                     

Forty years in the Land of Lincoln, with the Corn, in the Prairie State. He said, “We’ve come to the banana belt”. It was February and we could play outside without a coat. We weren’t in Minnesota anymore even though the children that came later looked like Minnesota kids and then they went back… no they didn’t go back because they are from here… the Prairie. They went to Minnesota. So even though we were in the land where Big Blue Stem sends roots 20 feet into the earth, our roots didn’t go that far. We are more like corn, a recent arrival whose roots are not so deep.

He had a plan… he always has a plan. We’d build a life together. So we started, in Jacksonville. We are nothing if not industrious… it has been said of us, “constant industry”.  Those first years of starting a nest egg looked more like a party to anyone on the outside. That small group of friends worked long hours in the store and then partied together.  Then the kids came, the store closed and our group scattered. We landed in the Capital City, known as Springpatch to some.

So we settled in a subdivision called Franklin Park out by the University that grew up out of the prairie. He sold spark plugs, a business that shrunk as the automotive industry was revolutionized by the advent of the electronic ignition. I worked for the legislature for a while. Our children grew, went to school and thrived in the subdivision surrounded by corn. There was soccer and gymnastics and softball and baseball and swimming, swimming, swimming. The Parent Teacher Club and Girl Scouts and Wednesday Thing at the Presbyterian Church, the one with Lincoln’s Pew.  The friends we made were the people with children involved in the same things as ours. Good people in our lives.

And when the Legislature dumped me I began to build a new life and a new career all the while driving children hither and yon. I turned my sights to the University… then known as Sangamon State University on the other side of the corn. New awareness, new knowledge and wonderful friends came my way as my world and new opportunities opened to me.

 

So I graduated and went to work in what would turn out to be my life’s calling, helping families and children who got caught up in the child welfare system just as the mandated reporting laws were enacted. That wasn’t what I planned at all… but then it was he that had the plans.

Thank goodness for his plans. He saw the need to find an activity that would create fun for our family and so we got a boat and Lake Springfield became our playground on summer afternoons with the little black dog, ears flopping in the wind on the prow.  Everybody but me learned to water ski including most of our children’s friends especially the girl with the red hair. They were good at it. And we took vacations to cabins in Minnesota, to the mountains in Montana, to the wilderness up north just to name a few.

And then when the children were ready to leave and I could not see my future, we found this place out by the gardens, out by the corn. And with constant industry….our other name, we took care of these 2 acres, planting, mowing, weeding and then doing it all again. We grew older and celebrated our age. With the help of our friends, we built an amazing shed and became woodworkers creating some beautiful furniture. Constant industry. We painted and remodeled and decorated this place until it was beautiful… it was always beautiful but we made it beutifuller.

In those days with businesses buying up businesses and constant reorganizations, the certain demise of his job finally occurred. We knew it would eventually but it lasted until it served its purpose. The kids were in college. A new opportunity arose selling all kinds of things providing us with a cornucopia of samples and a fresh new outlook on life.

And when not being industrious we rode bikes with the notorious NOBES (Numb on Both Ends) on Saturdays around the county. With our dear friends, we represented the NOBES at TRAM (The Ride Across Minnesota).  We laughed and joked and ate breakfast with a wonderful group of friends. It was an awesome season in our lives but like so many of our friendship groups they scattered.

 Every year, a weekend in April became the Sister’s Retreat when my 3 sisters gathered here to celebrate our lives. Now our daughters, daughters-in-law, nieces and nieces-in-law gather each year to laugh, eat and tell stories. We changed our name to DOM (Daughters of Marjorie) to celebrate our mother’s life. Now DOM is safely in the hands of the next generation. The dining room hosted feasts for  DOM, Thanksgiving, gourmet dinners and gatherings of friends bathed in the warm glow from the dark cranberry walls and candle light.

The boat gathered dust and took up the third stall in the garage and so we decided to sell and that money sat in the bank waiting for something new. One day when a bunch of motorcyclists were in town, I saw a man and woman getting off their big road bike, both in leather chaps and jackets. I thought to myself, “We could do that.” I kept that thought in my head for a week because I knew as soon as I said it out loud, he would start to shop for a bike. So for 9 years we rode our Ultra Classic to beautiful places around the country…. but mostly down highways lined by corn.

Our family is little bigger now. We have a wonderful daughter-in-law who gave us the light of our lives, a little girl named Edie who is 2 years old and is calling us home.

The Ultra Classic is sitting in the 3^rd stall of the garage…. Not collecting dust because it is covered. But it is for sale. The beautiful house has a contract on it and we are now shepherding it for the next owners.  Our jobs are winding down as we prepare to turn them over to new people. Our constant industry will become less constant but we still have a plan. When we are finished working and have no house, we will get a big motor home and live wherever it takes us, sometimes home to Edie.  We have friends scattered around the country. Now we will go where they are.  He says, “It sounds like a plan.”