So here I am, listening to Dancing in September...yes I am listening to a 70's Disco hit and I am bouncing my feet wishing I was dancing, and perhaps it is true that the effects of sleep deprivation mirror being drunk, because my inhibitions have dropped.
My dearest, and in fact only, brother celebrated his 28 birthday a few days ago. He decided he needed a rifle from the ranch, and so decided to make a journey home and back to Idaho in a day. He asked me to go, and I rearranged my schedule so I could leave as soon as I was done teaching. That meant overloading my schedule, but any chance to get back to the ranch I take.
This week has been busy. I am the teaching assistant for Dr. Walburger in Economics and Dr. Whoolery in Psychology. This week, Dr. Walburger left town and I covered his principle of Microeconomics classes. I love to teach and so it was a joy expounding to the students the basic theories of competition and market power. I had to sacrifice getting up at 5:45 and working out or playing racquetball, so I could instead get to class early and prepare, but it was well worth it. I have an affinity for teaching and would love to teach if I know I could support my family on a teacher's salary. Nonetheless, the highlight of my week was on Friday when my brother came to my class and watched me teach. After class got out, he and I drove up to Montana. I slept most of the way up, catching up on needed rest, but as soon as we entered the Big Hole Valley, I was wide awake. The serenity and anachronism of my valley puts me at peace whenever I enter it. I am reminded of the temple. Whenever I attend the temple, I take off my watch because I know time has no place there, and in sacredness I devote what is necessary to God, instead of the time I have allotted. The same is true of the Big Hole. I don't give myself a time schedule, instead I devote the time that is necessary there and if that is longer or shorter than expected, then so be it. We drove down the small hill into the where the houses are clustered together to see my grandmother out with the leaves and my cousin cutting down some of the shrubs. We climbed the steps to our front door, and entered to the smell of fresh squash pie and my smiling mother. My father was writing in his journal in the computer room. The moment we came in, Clay and I together, without his wife, and just my mother and my father home I felt like I was a little boy again. I remembered the years it was just the four of us. We always ate dinner together, my mother always had some type of desert, my father was always preoccupied in the computer room, and Clay and I were always being smart asses. It was a family potrait, a moment that will be imbedded in my heart and mind. My mother is the same, except for a few more wrinkles, as she has always been. My father is unchanged, except his cut and trim body from working out everyday is now a little softer as he has settled into his 60's. My brother is still tall and brooding, though his extra weight has softened his features and given him a twisted smirk the does not bely his true love and charity. Me....well I don't think I have changed...but I am older, more cynical, not the toothpick I always was, instead I am in the position of not being thin and not really being overweight. Clay and I both look more like our parents, and our mannerisms, from how we walk to how we talk, reflect our father. Time has entered that sacred valley, though I have sworn not to bring it, but those things most important never change. The love of the home, the drama of dealing with my grandma, the smell of the new steers recently boughten and watched out the front window, the cold seeping through the walls to the bone. Every part of my home makes my heart wrench and makes me never want to leave.
We all agreed to get a family potrait done this year. We have never had a picture taken as a family, and I think it would be good to start the tradition, and so we are going to add it. We talked politics, school, religion, jokes, and goals as we sat around the table and ate ham, oriental salad, potato salad, squash pie, water brought from the artisan well 2 miles away, fresh rolls, and fresh made jams. We moved into the living room and we rotated with Clay talking to Dad and my mother and I talking about our most recent forays into new literature. Then my father and I talking politics and where I will go to law school, if I ever want to get married (he is pushing the issue, he wants grandchildren) and how I look more like him the older I get. Soon, the 3 hour drive back to Rexburg looms on our minds, and we have only had 3 hours at the house. We pick up and head to grandma's. She complains, bemoans illegal immigration (though she is hispanic) and then talks about dying...some things never change, and so we joke back that we will start to party and misbehave as soon as she dies, and she get feisty as usual and lets us know that she is going to haunt us till we die. We leave, and Clay and I joke about how I will dig her out of the grave to sit at my graduation from law school, because she is the main reason I am going, just so she can be happy knowing her grandson finally obeyed her wishes. We go home and hug everyone, with mom continually finding ways to always be the last person to get a hug, and then circling around and getting another one. We agree to meet up on Saturday, of next week, when they all come down to my mother's uncle's funeral.
3 hours home are filled with good conversation with my brother and dear friend........ and as I walk back into my apartment, and reality, realize that truly the home is as spiritual and renewing as the temple. I pray I may have that same spirit in my home someday, so that my children can feel as renewed to deal with life when they visit me, as I feel when I visit my home in the mountains of Montana.
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