where I find myself

There's a white sign with a red border on the side of the road. If you turn off from the east you have to cross double yellow lines, and pray for the patience of the car behind you to wait as you make your turn.

The edge of the road is lined with blackberry brambles, and from time to time you'll see a deer or a wild turkey making their way through the brush. About a hundred feet in you'll see a stack of mail boxes, the only clue that some 30 people live on this property.

Turn right and you'll pass the lumber yard office, boxed in by American trucks and hauling equipment. Up the drive you'll find the house where your sister was married, where hundreds of eggs are hidden each Spring, where you used to find garden snakes in the little metal sprinkler well on the side of the big lawn.

Up the hill is a small ring of apartments and an old oak that succumbed yesterday to the honeybees who made its' inside their home. The honeybees will be saved as their numbers are dwindling and they play a critical role in the life of the fields and orchards that sustain our valleys. This little apartment community gathered yesterday to mourn the loss of this tree, and my six year old cousin burst into tears today as he saw it laying on its' side and he reminisced about all the times he explored its branches and swung beneath its leaves.

To the left of the apartments is a horse corral and beyond its fences the field my grandfather could have bought some fifty years ago, but simply never got around to. It houses the oaks that I treasure, whose branches my generation conquered and made our own.

Make a loop around the old tree and head back to the highway and take the only right offered to you. At the top of an oak-lined driveway is the business grandpa built. The labors of a Polish immigrant whose parents encouraged him to leave his language behind and embrace his new country when he was just a boy. The business his sons still run, and which four of his grandchildren now earn their living from.

Pull into the old carport. Hear the sound your shoes make as you cross the cement and step up to the walkway between the old house and the apartment that's housed friends and family throughout the years. Catch the faint smell of Grandma's roses as they mix with the oaks on the breeze, and pass under the grape vines you took so much pleasure in when you were a child.

Open the door that has no lock, hear the latch click behind you - the same sound it has made your whole life. Step into the house and you're home.