Gettin' Back to My Roots

Almost five years have passed since I have been home in Goldsboro, NC, for the summer. How much I had forgotten in that time! As much as I enjoy my life in Peru, my home country still intrigues and captivates me every time I visit, especially during the summertime. A simple trip down the highways offers a great view of the crops varying from tobacco to peanuts to cotton. I listened intently as my mom explained the process from long ago of growing, raising, cropping, and harvesting tobacco. Now, most of that process has been replaced by machines, but the memories remain.

I find even the most simple things amaze me almost as if I’d never seen them before. Walking into a store and finding everything I could possibly need there (Oh, how I love capitalism!), getting into my car and driving to that store, putting all the dishes in a dishwasher and just waiting for them to finish, enjoying an afternoon or evening thunderstorm yet getting excited when the sun shines again—it’s the simple things in life that make it special.

Of course, this was also the first July 4th I had spent at home in four years. Watching fireworks while sitting on the back of not a small car but a pick-up truck, eating watermelon right off the rind while lounging out in the driveway, enjoying homemade chocolate ice cream or fresh peaches or blueberries with vanilla ice cream—it is these activities that make them the good ole’ days of summer.

My short time there also allowed me to visit with family and learn of days long gone and the people who made those days so special. My brother informed me that we have a fifth generation grandfather who fought in the Revolutionary War; now I feel inspired to join the Daughters of the American Revolution. He also told me about an uncle who during the Civil War abandoned the South to fight for the Yanks. His family disowned him. :)

Three men from the past stick out in my mind as figures larger than life—Ronald Reagan, my great-grandfather Emmett Martin, and my grandfather Allan Griffin. Their stories capture my attention so easily making me wish I could have sat down in their presence to listen to their tales of working horses or of farm life or of World War II. All three great men left this world having worked hard for their families and for their countries. Such wishes cannot be fulfilled on this earth but perhaps on the next. :) Maybe on the next, we'll have more of those good ole' days of summer.