A Land of My Own

I have posted before about my feelings regarding this country. Having seen so little of it, I've always felt apart--it is, after all, my children's home, and only a shelter for me. Grateful as I am to have been so received, I cannot get past the foreign-ness of my accent.

But dear Trishy has helped me take a few steps out of my shell. I've now seen so much more than I'd ever have imagined possible--even as recently as two years ago. The world is wider but not for that less cozy, warm, and familiar. Everywhere I go, the plants are green, the water's mostly blue, the air too. It is so warm, reassuring that it be so. And though most travelers might laugh at this obvious observation, it never was a given to me. Humanoid beings occupy most spaces, and at least while I'm traveling the United States, they speak English (after a fashion). I think I've also posted on Americans' use of the language and will refrain from doing so again--for now.

The best part is not in the differences, which I expected, but in the similarities. It is all one country, from the dry desert near home to the wettest forest outside Seattle, to the wide, wide river that flows (not always quite so gently) through this new city I am now visiting. I regret not having been able to spend more time at Mamacita's (link on the right), but when ever would I get a chance to drive on over to the arch? And boy! What an arch!

The thing is bigger than the t.v. shows I've seen about might lead the careless watcher to expect. It is breath-taking! At 7:30a.m., the three little Mexican people who happened to arrive at the parking lot at the same time I did, and I, walked up the little walk from the structure to the arch, and nearly gasped when we reached it. Somebody said the Statue of Liberty would fit under it--and I don't doubt it. It is so shiny and pretty, so new in its uniqueness, and yet so far from foreign. Seattle, Portland, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, St. Louis--a short list, perhaps, to many, but to me a sufficiently widespread sample to say with little hesitation: this land is my land. At long last, these are my people. Black, Mexican, any of ten different kinds of white (like my new little Irish-kind-of-folk in Indiana), immigrant and native-born, boys and girls and everything in between. English-, French-, Spanish-speakers, and those who tried to teach me sign language in Santa Monica, or the two-year old who signed "thank you" at the airport when I left for here--they are my people, too.

Trite though it might sound, and though you've heard it often, the blood's all the same color. But, more importantly, the top light, the red one: it means stop. The red flashing hand on the other side of the street means don't cross. The round green symbol, with the girl in the middle and the white letters means: come get a cup of overpriced coffee. We are all the same because we've chosen to be so. More than land, more than language, more than anything at all, anywhere and at any time, this is my land, these are my people, simply and only because I claim it so. No paper can make that more real. Nothing else anybody else can do will welcome me home like the thought that I belong. It's silly, I know, but anywhere I go, from now on, I'm always going home.

Thanks!

And just to avoid leaving this on a "deep" note, I just wanted to show one more pic, to see if it looks to you like it did to me. Tell me how this looks: