I remember my reaction to the news that my family was moving from Arkansas to Nebraska. It wasn't good. We'd already moved from the place I considered home...a mountain in northwest Arkansas and a town so small that all of its commerce and government existed in one building.
The setting was beautiful enough to create a lifetime of mental images. My dad drove the mountain roads that took us upward and far from my urban understanding. We left the city full of excitement...a pending adventure mysteriously awaited our arrival, hiding in the thick of the trees that lured us with their woody tendrils, calling us to invade their space and make unto ourselves a world of our own...and we played.
For near three years we ran free on 65 acres of heaven, covered with trees and wild animals. We collected moths as large as our hands, and spied upon the secret love rituals of birds we'd never seen or heard. We lingered beneath the mimosa tree, it's sweet intoxicating fragrance inspiring us climb its fragile limbs and collect its soft, pink flowers that didn't press well in a book.
We walked the red dirt roads, our feet like bronzed leather to match the color of our sun-kissed skin. An hours walk down the mountain was the store which was a post office and a gas station and the place where the fire truck with the ancient bell sat parked beneath the lean-to on the side of the building. We saved our change and bought moon pies and bottles of soda.
We dangled our feet in the hard running stream across from the store and watch crawdads dart feverishly from stone to stone, careful not to upset a sleeping snake or snapping turtle. We'd left our concrete playground; the parking lot of the church where we wore the tires off our bikes and kicked cans until they turned into balls of jagged metal. No longer would the long chains of swings lift us into the air...now we climbed into trees and up hillsides. The dizzying twirl of merry-go-rounds were unnecessary to amuse a child that wadded a creek or swung from a vine that hung tightly to its host. Just when we'd mastered the mountain, we moved to the plains.
My early experiences in Nebraska were hard. The moment we left the trees of Skylight Mountain, my heart sank and for good reason. A teenaged girl with southern ways wasn't understood at the tender age of fifteen in the small town of Hebron. I missed the beauty of where we'd come from and the many beautiful people who opened their homes to us and gave us their best when it was obvious they had nothing to give.
For years I fantasized about a place to call home. If it is where the heart is, then mine was far from my body and my family could feel it. My grandmother would say I was "out of sorts." Indeed. I longed for everything I couldn't have in terms of geography. My vision of home was a place, not a condition. I had three beautiful children, a loving husband and every reason to be happy, which for the most part I was. But like many others, I wanted what I couldn't have. I wanted to be where my the people before me had been, live in their neighborhood and do business at the places they had built. I couldn't have it. Then we found Papillion.
When I was moved to Nebraska, I thought I'd left my home behind, until I found another. My husband and I moved into Papillion seventeen years ago. It is the place where my children grew and played their games and made their lifelong friends. Though we've moved from one house to another, it is still the place where they will come and rest their heads and smell the food cooking in Mama's kitchen...the food of their youth, calling them back to the table we shared to remember life as we lived it then and talk about how we live it now. Papillion; a place where the people have come alongside us and reminded me that home is where you're loved and where you can love others and though the mountain of my childhood will always compete against the prairie of my present life, I am at peace. Beautiful Papillion has come into my heart and flutters gently against the hope that future generations will come and find our mark here. I am home.
