I have never liked “The Wizard of Oz”, nor the Ruby Slippers. My reasons are a bit fuzzy, but they are enough. First, the movie is way too long. Too much in the way of parade and spectacle and costume showcasing. Second, there’s Munchkin Land music. Yikes. The Munchkin’s songs are catchy in a sort of demented, irritating way peculiar to advertising ditties: they get stuck in your head and mock you when you least want to hear them. Third, while the wicked witches are delightfully evil and scary, the protagonists cry way too often, and way too much (Dorothy’s eyes are constantly be-dewed, the tin man rusts his joints with weeping, and the lion whines and wails til you just want to whack him). And last, I must protest the ruby slippers (maybe because I’m jealous, wishing they were real, and mine). As pretty as the ruby slippers are, they’re too pat an answer. Too easy and quick a solution to a problem that has plagued the tearful Dorothy for at least two (or is it three?) hours, through encounters with a fraudulent salesman, a tornado, a kidnapping, flying monkeys, a positively pink Glenda, and opiate-induced slumber. But I do like the song “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”, how it teases and plays with the concept of “There’s No Place Like Home”. Together, they create a paradox: loving the comfort of home, we dream the impossible dream, longing for that far away green country where bluebirds fly. It was to this paradox that I travelled last week with my husband. Minus the ruby slippers (darn it).
We drove to south-central Washington, our former home, in a rented black wanna-be SUV. It was too small to be real, and got terrible gas mileage. But it was way more glamorous and posh than our fading minivan. Which we left at home in Utah with our children and my new dress (which would have looked great with ruby slippers, darn it again). All safe.
I love long drives with Frank. Our being alone together on the road seems to me to be proof that we each belong to the other. It is one way we have been able to stay connected in our twenty years of marriage; it is both serious therapy, and quiet play. We talk, we unravel, we re-create. We notice things and share what we see (we have at least the passing terrain in common; it is ours, because we experience it simultaneously). This time, the hours of driving were particularly vital. We have been through a lot recently, but we haven’t been through enough of it together. We have become somewhat disconnected.
We encountered a spring blizzard in Idaho. We ran through a wild, wild flurry of snow when we took a pit stop just before Burley. We broke for sandwiches in Meridian, remembering old friends that used to live there, and watched the sun set over rolling hills an hour or so past Ontario. Which was where the dirt became the right color again, the native grasses took on the right texture, and the slope of the hills started to look like home. We paused in our journey to say hello to my parents and grandma at the final edge of the Blue Mountains above Pendleton, and I thought of our children and all the springs and summers and Christmases they’d seen there. When we woke the next morning to familiar Kennewick breezes, my circadian rhythms untangled with a relieved sigh (even though I spent at least ten years of my earlier life hating Tri-City wind). We spent two golden days between Kennewick, Benton City, and Prosser… all places that were once my home, all places that to me in the last couple of exiled years have become my impossible, left-behind dream. We drove down DeMoss next to the Yakima river late one afternoon. When I saw the familiar oversized cranes perched in their trees, I was flooded with memories of a time of contentment, tranquillity, even fulfillment. How connected and happy Frank and I were, building our Benton City farmhouse together. Baby Nora invited herself into our midst the moment that the house was finished.
We spent time with Frank’s parents and siblings, quietly celebrating a landmark event in his sister’s life at the Columbia River temple. I visited two beloved Benton City friends. Talked long and happily with one, ran shrieking with laughter into the surprised arms of the other. She gave me divisions of miniature iris that I had shared with her two springs ago; irises that the first friend had given me the spring before that. Now I have a living, blooming memento of both of them, as well as a tangible reminder of my miraculous Benton City garden. And last, as a final sweet note, I reconnected with a friend and a chance acquaintance from my high school days. Once again, as I took in the graciousness of both women and watched my friend’s child at play, my ancient adolescent hope that we were all real and good and ok was validated (reality is so hard to grasp in high school).
That place, the Columbia Basin, the Yakima Valley, was my Shire. It was where I had all my babies; it was where I planted my gardens and taught myself to paint; it was where I really learned to work, and where I made my dearest friends. It nourished and embraced Frank and I and our children while we grew. I will always love it; I hope that soon I will grow past being homesick for it. And it was good to share the journey and the short lingering with Frank.
