Living Life With The Top Down

I was born and raised in a small South Midwestern town. I grew up on a farm living in the same house my parents still live in today. My Dad and his nephew ran the family farm Baker Brothers Farms. We all learned what makes the world go around at a young age. My Grandfather, as well as my Father, taught all of us children if you want anything in life you have to work for it. You do a two dollar job your pay will reflect that. You do a Fifty dollar job your pay will reflect that. My Grandma Kate lived next door to me from the time I was four years old until I left home. Tomorrow we are celebrating her one-hundredth birthday to which you are now a part of.

My parents were very no-nonsense people. My Dad also had a job as a contractor for the county. My Mom was a stay at home Mom. Every summer we always traveled. My parents made certain that my brothers and I saw nearly every state. I soaked up every moment of it. I loved adventure, waking up each morning in a different state.

I memorized the number of steps to the visitor center at Mount Rushmore. I found the perfect angle to truly appreciate the immensity of the Lincoln Memorial. I also memorized the turns of each road, the angle of each mountain. I looked forward to summer all year just for those exhilarating two weeks.

I saved my extra milk money all school year to buy newspapers from every city where I awoke along the way. My parents thought it was foolish but I didn’t care. I enjoyed reading about Randy Murphy the quarterback for Sioux City High, Marcy Thompson a star gymnast form Waite, Maine, and one of my favorites Colonel Joseph Banks from Prentiss, Mississippi. A highly decorated war veteran of World War I and II. He sat in a rocking chair weathered by time and life in much of the same way as he was, on the porch of the Country Store greeting everyone wearing his uniform each day. I saw him he intrigued me and lucky for me his story was in the Prentiss times. At the time we were traveling through the week of his one-hundredth birthday. I always wished I had known his story while we were there, oh the questions I could have asked him. A fun thing I did notice the chair was weathered as was he, however not the uniform. It was pridefully taken care of.

I began preparing for my journey to celebrate Grandma’s birthday and I thought about Colonel Joseph Banks and Grandma. One hundred years have brought so many things to our world. The invention of television, the radio, microwave ovens, cell phones, and computers. Society has brought us from wearing one of a kind made with love garments to a time where we register our prom dresses to make sure no one else attends wearing the same one.

In 1906 it took weeks to receive a letter from New York to California. Now our world is instant gratification. A person in New York can send flowers to a person in California at ten a.m. the person in California could be receiving them at ten a.m. on that very same day. I can take a photo in Central Park and anyone in the world can see it instantly, you can now virtually travel with me. We can video chat and you can see everything that I see. Predictive text and spell check have caused the near extinction of the Webster’s Dictionary.

So many things happen in what seems to be the blink of an eye. First, you are a child running jumping, skipping, playing games with your friends. Being relentlessly teased by your older brother/sister. Then in only a moment, you are a teenager making your own choices dreaming your own dreams. You are skipping, running, jumping into your future. Only a moment later you are an adult, the true friendships you have known begin to fade, they are replaced by adult responsibilities and business meetings. In most cases, you become a wife/husband, mother/father. Your dreams often become a faint memory. Your former dreams are replaced evolving into dreams which are now dreamed for your children.

Mistakes become more realized as you make your way through adult life trying to protect your children from repeating history and the mistakes of your past. You are still skipping trying to keep up with daily life becomes a run and eventually a jump. You will do anything to protect your children from the world.

My Parents were no different than any other parents in that respect. They wanted to protect and keep me from the world and all the insanity of it. Grandma Kate was always there to be my saving grace. They would tell me, no and she would listen to me vent about the unfairness of it all. She always knew when I needed a homemade sugar cookie or one of her famous poor man’s doughnuts.

I was three years old when my Grandfather passed away. A year later Grandma sold their farm, the home she and my Grandfather had built. They had raised seven children there. They had raised crops and taught their children the value of hard work. In the winter Grandfather made custom furniture in his workshop. He also was noted as the best television and radio repairman around. Her children including my Mother felt she was too old to live there alone and there was no one to help her. She had no driver’s license and no desire for one. She always said she had no problem driving the tractor and she would just take it to the market. She drove it to church so what was the problem. They still insisted she sell, so just like that, she sold their life’s work leaving her with only photos and her memories.

I was happy she became an everyday fixture in my life. Growing up I always found solace in running to her house. My brother and his friends would tease me and I would take off running to her house. She always knows a great story to tell to ease me.

As I grew older I began to realize that my Parents treated her in the same manner as me. They treated her like a child. Her life was diminishing right along with mine. She lived her life at their mercy. She just like me was dependent on them for everything. The only difference was I got to leave and go to school every day. My parents just sheltered me not allowing me to go and grow. Eventually, I was able to drive and go to work allowing me that sweet taste of freedom.

I remember as if it were only yesterday. The summer after my first year of college. I was nineteen. I had desperately wanted to go away to school. I had dreamt of it every day since seventh grade. I wasn’t able to leave to attend the school of my dreams. I was stuck going to South Western University, just a short forty minute drive from our farm. so no need to live on campus. This left me living at the mercy of my parents. I had to live by the rules of Billy and Mary Jane Baker and that is no way to spend life as a college student. I enrolled in every night class I could so I could stay out later.

One Sunday evening I finally had enough. I was nineteen years old and my Saturday night curfew had just been moved up to ten thirty. WhoooooHOOOOO! I wanted so badly to escape.

I had dreamt of going away to college since middle school. I had wanted to attend Georgetown University in Washington D.C. since. Our vacation the summer before seventh grade took us there. I feel in love. I didn’t know I could fall in love with a city. All I had ever known was farm living.

I had always appreciated the cities we traveled through on our vacations, but Washington D.C. it stole my heart. I can still smell the coffee coming from the coffee Shoppe across from the library steps, the sweet smell of the exhaust from the bus, mixed with the scent of cherry blossoms. Georgetown looked like something from a fairytale.

Magnificent hundred-year-old buildings, towers holding books that had been read by some of the world’s greatest minds. Those beautiful pages of hundred-year-old books living in the library the places they have traveled the stories of those who have touched their pages sharing the same moments as the current reader.

Upon our return home I told my parents I wanted to attend Georgetown for college. They told me “ABSOLUTELY NOT! First of all, it would take more than a day to drive there. Second of all, it is too far away (second of all seemed like the same as first of all but who am I to judge). Third of all if I wanted to be fancy and go to college there are plenty of places to go much closer.” My Mother was always happy to say these words and allow my father to just agree.

On this particular Sunday evening, I had hit my limit. My friends that went away to college came home for the summer were all able to come and go as they pleased. No one was answering to their parents about where they were going or what they were doing they were free. I desired that freedom. I coveted their freedom.

I finally got up the nerve to tell them I was moving out. I had saved my money. I worked double shifts I did everything to make as much extra as I possibly could. I told them I was getting a house with my friends and that was all there was to it. All my friends had gone away to school they were living in dorms, some even had apartments. They didn’t have curfews anymore so why should I. They would have none of it.

“YOU LISTEN HERE, YOUNG LADY. YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS LIVING ON YOUR OWN. My Mother’s voice was cracking as she shouted at me.”

Her right index finger flying as her salt and pepper hair waved. She was barely five feet tall so she had to look up at me even though I am only five four. She was still dressed in her church clothes. Gray dress with tiny blue flowers not a wrinkle in sight.

Unlike my Dad, he towered over me his six foot four frame. His blonde hair never even moved. His hair was so blonde it hid the gray hair that I am certain he blamed me for. He also was still dressed in his church clothes minus his sports coat. Navy blue dress pants and light blue button-down dress shirt.

He shouted “NUMBER ONE (they loved to number everything) YOU CANNOT AFFORD IT. NUMBER TWO IT’S NOT SAFE.”
His deep voice had frightened me all my life but not today.
He continued “NUMBER THREE YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS LIVING WITH A BUNCH OF GIRLS. YOU WOULD ONLY BE SETTING YOURSELF UP FOR TROUBLE.”

This was a first for me I didn’t hold back my reply was probably what sent them over the edge. “NUMBER ONE I HAVE SAVED MONEY AND I CAN AFFORD IT. NUMBER TWO I AM NINETEEN YEARS OLD AND THE ONLY PERSON I KNOW WITH A TEN THIRTY CURFEW. NUMBER THREE WHO SAID I WAS MOVING IN WITH GIRLS.”
It was as if I dropped a bomb. You would think I was the one responsible for Pearl Harbor. I was screaming they were screaming.
The last words I said, “WHY CAN’T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE AND LET ME MAKE MY OWN MISTAKES?”
That was the moment they slammed my door before I could. I was finally alone in my room.

Perhaps I could make my own decisions. Finally. I decided to crawl out my window and run to Grandma’s house. I quickly changed into my favorite faded red Coca-Cola t-shirt and cutoff Levi’s. My Mothers most hated combination. I wasn’t allowed to wear shorts outside of the home. I asked her if I could use her phone. Her house still had the remnants of Sunday Dinner fried chicken, I had to work and didn’t join them for Sunday Dinner but She always made me a plate.

She nodded as she sat there crocheting in her rocking chair. Her Bible on her lap reading and crocheting as she rocks back and forth. My Grandfather had made her that rocking chair the first year they were married. She rocked her seven babies in that chair. Countless nieces and nephews. Her thirty-seven grandchildren, of which I was the youngest. The stories that the chair could tell. She was wearing her brown sweater, it was summer but she was always chilly especially in the evenings. Brown and white checked pants, a white shirt beneath and her favorite lavender house slippers.

I began dialing her phone with each turn of the rotary it seemed like a lifetime for it to come back around to the next number. I called every friend I could think of and not one single friend would come to pick me up. Everyone was terrified of my Dad. Grandma just sat there crocheting all the while pretending not to be listening as I begged each friend to come for me.

She broke her silence. “You know that is just their way of saying I love you.”

I shrugged my shoulders before I replied. “Funny, I did not get that message. You know. I can still move out anyway. I am over 18 after all and I am mostly independent.”

Grandma sighed. “You know they can make you feel bad and guilty for abandoning them. I should know they make me feel like I should be grateful to be a prisoner in my own home.” “

Your Mother and I quote. “Don’t plant that many flowers” one of my favorites, “don’t paint the swing that color of red.”

I jumped to my feet. “You know what we should do? We should run away, just leave go live somewhere else just you and me Grandma the two of us.”

The chattering began. Grandma was full of quick responses. “We could go live at the beach. I have always dreamt of winning the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, having a glass floor where I could watch all the shells, and creatures of the sea brought in by the tides.”
We went on for what seemed like hours making our great plans. I told her everything about how they screamed at me and oh how they didn’t understand me.

Grandma even said, “ funny thing is you are right you have been independent since your arrival into this world.“ She patted my hand with her warm weathered from a life of hard work hands she had the most beautiful olive skin.

She said “Lizzie I will move out with you. Her voice was warm exuding only love, the deepest unconditional love. We could go away go to Florida like we talked about getting that house on the beach with a glass floor.”

I jumped to my feet and shouted, “That would be perfect Grandma.”

Moments later Grandma was standing before me with her brown pleather suitcase in one hand and reaching in her bra to pull out a wad of money with the other.

She quietly said “this is how much I have. How much do you have?”
I was speechless my Grandma wants to run away at nearly eighty years old and start a new life making a new home with her nineteen-year-old Granddaughter.

She said “Good to get it to get packed and we leave just before dawn. I love you.”
I was stunned. “I love you too.”