Going Home

Growing up, with two parents working, my brother and sister and I spent most summers and Saturdays at my grandma's house.
Most days we would walk across the field to my great grandma Mohar's house.

Her house was the first one on that road.

So they named the road after her family.



When my Grandma Mohar died in 1997, my grandma and her brothers and sister sold the farm. It was a hard decision for everyone.

We loved the old place.

Amazingly, the lovely man that bought it, kept it pretty much the same. He just build a new house on the property and left the house where at least 2 of my Grandma Mohar's children were born, intact.

I remember such great things about growing up around this place. Playing in the old cars in her field, smelling the wild roses growing as we walked up the road to her house, chasing down the peacock that ran wild on her property, playing in the barn, seeing chickens and cats (according to Maile's memory) everywhere, feeding baby lambs and reaching over the fence to pet the cows and sheep. Oh, and being reminded over and over again to stay away from the canal.

Every few summers we would have a reunion with my grandma's siblings and their kids and grandkids. I remember running around with my second cousins, getting scraped up and dirty and then running back for lunch and homemade icecream.

Well this year, the kind gentleman who now owns it, said we could all come back to the old homestead and have another reunion.

So on Saturday, we all went back.

With tears in my eyes I watched my own children and nieces and nephews play in the sames places we used to.

Maile and I sat on the front porch, reminiscing, listening to the wind in the trees, the sound of the little creek, and smelling the lilacs from Grandma Mohar's lilac trees that are still blooming.

Mt. Peoh, the little mountain that most of Cle Elum has a view of, looked spendid on Saturday. I remember being told as a child that we would know when we could plant the garden when Mt. Peoh had no more snow on it.

This is who is left now. Seated from left to right, my Uncle Norman, my Auntie Ann, and my Uncle Donald. My grandma and my Uncle Johnny have both passed.

It was with a weird joy that Nora came to me totally filthy. Just like a day on the farm should do for a kid.

I don't know that I can ever give my kids what I was given as a child. All I have are my memories now. Although the gentleman that now owns the farm told us we could come back every year if we wanted to. Oh, I want to.

So much of my childhood was Keno and Maile and I. The places changed, grownups fade in and out of my memories. But my brother and sister are solidly in place amongst the happiest memories of my life. Oh how I love them.



And this guy, my daddy,

and my mom and my Aunt Cathy.

Thank you for being my family.

It really did feel like being home again.

(Upstairs in the old house.)



The End.