“I like to see you pickin’ wildflowers, pretty girls and wildflowers go together.” It was a typical hot and humid southern missouri day. The air was heavy, it practically sat on your shoulders and sweet too: the smell of honeysuckle drifted up from the creek. I had just got back from the east pasture after picking wildflowers to put on Grandmother’s grave. I had a handful of black-eyed susans, purple cornflower, and yellow yarrow. My grandpa kissed me on the cheek and I gave him a hug. I don’t think he realized I was headed to the airport, headed back to Reno after I visted Grandmother’s grave which was south of town.
But anyway, today, I sit here, almost 2,000 miles away, at a small kitchen table in Reno, NV, reminecsing about my grandpa’s ramblings. Here, the dry wind causes the skin on my face to dry and crack and grandpa’s ramblings seem as distant as a dream.
I remember one hot summer day, after my grandmother died, I think, my grandpa and I sat in the little farm house together and talked. There was no air conditioning, but it was late afternoon, and a thunderstorm was on the horizon. The ceiling fan rattled away in the kitchen as it did its best to circulate the otherwise stagnant air. Grandpa, a farmer almost all his life talked to me about his mules: Jack and John. They were 18 hands high and so wide they couldn’t plow a field side by side.
Half the time I talked to grandpa, I couldn’t understand what he was saying through his thick Arkansas accent. When I was a little girl, about 5 or 6 I would catch a few phrases like, “Marse, I do believe she’s as purty as speckled pup.” Marse being my mother.
It’s these endearing phrases that I keep close to my heart and will always remember. These phrases that bring me back to my roots, to those days on the farm with my grandpa. And I will tell them to my children, if I ever have any, keeping my grandpa’s memory alive.
