On Neff Road: An elephant’s eye

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“The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye. And it looks like its climbing clear up to the sky.” Well, I might not be in Oklahoma, but I am in Indiana looking at the beautiful fields of corn surrounding the house. Ah, yes, home again.

Well, I really am not home, but Indiana is pretty close, and my sister is home. Then again, we can never really go home. I guess I realize that more and more over the years. We can reminisce, but we cannot go back. Once we leave, we change. When we return things have changed. So, with visiting comes remembering, or for me, a new column.

Everything catapults me into the past. The corn fields, wild bunnies peeking out of the fields. A horse in the paddock and a duck that likes to follow us around. Back again to farm country where times past await me.

I am thankful for the friends I still have back home. They are indeed a gift. We pick up conversations where we left off no matter how many years have passed. Geneva will call me Sis, and once more, I will feel that closeness we shared when my father passed. We all get older and these meetings are priceless. Precious gems added to my ring of life.

It takes a couple days to settle into this leisurely life. I miss my home and my guy. There is a longing that takes place when you live away from the roots that raised you; however, I love my home in Oregon and would not wish to live elsewhere. Still my heart belongs to these states where memories were made.

There is a beauty of living away. You not only increase in awareness by living with different people with different ways, but you also look back and find that those parts of you not only fit into this new life, but they also add to what you can offer others. I am a better person for expanding my world and would not change the place where I was born. Both have created the me who writes each week. They created the wide range of experiences I have gained by living in Ohio, Wisconsin and now Oregon. All were different experiences and all blessings in so many ways.

My time in Ohio will be short. Having a new house to settle has made this trip a much shorter one. Before I even think of leaving here again, I am homesick to return. Yes, the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye, and I am once more living back a lane looking out the upstairs window across Daddy’s cornfield at Neff Road. I did not leave Neff Road. It is all tucked sweetly in my head.

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By Pamela Loxley Drake

On Neff Road

Pamela Loxley Drake is a former resident of Darke County and is the author of Neff Road and A Grandparent Voice blog. She can be reached at [email protected]. Viewpoints expressed in the article are the work of the author. The Daily Advocate does not endorse these viewpoints or the independent activities of the author.

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