Reunion

It was the red dirt that let me know I was almost there.


Southwest Oklahoma is a hard land. It was never meant to be anything but prairie. I showed my daughter a satellite picture online; it was all squares. That’s why I know north and south, east and west. I learned to drive where every mile was marked in squares, where you could see to the horizon unless the wind was blowing, where the red dirt covered your car, your feet, your life. It looked like everything had boundaries, when really, we had to find them ourselves.

I traveled back in time to my thirtieth high school reunion, and it was a pleasant surprise. Not the town; the town was the same. There were a few different stores; one theater had closed, a multiplex had opened. There’s a Walmart now, and a new subdivision. But the essence of the town was the same as the day I first saw it in 1975.

It was the people who surprised me. Many classmates never left or they returned after college. They are farmers, manufacturers, bankers, lawyers. They are the solid citizens who keep the town on track. They host barbecues at football games and teach vacation Bible school and raise money for the kids’ band trips. They don't much resemble the teenagers I once knew.

The rest of us had left and taken root in other places, but we had this one tendril still stuck in the red soil. Our time in this corner of the world had changed us forever. We were in school, but we learned more than algebra. We learned who to trust, who to watch, who to befriend or not. We learned that a sense of humor can carry you longer than anything else. We learned how to stand on our own two feet, and how to lean on others. We learned to stay safe.

After the lunches and brunches and late night buffets, after a hundred hugs and reintroductions and pictures, I drove away with rows of cotton marking my passage. The unbearable heat of the day before had broken with a light shower, just enough to beat down the dust. The day before, I'd seen a doe bounding away, several wild turkeys running awkwardly across the road, a rabbit crouching in a yard, a stray cat moving her kittens. There is an abundance here that isn’t visible to the casual observer.

At Nine Mile Hill I could see forever. I didn’t look back.