Years ago I met an international businessman’s daughter who lived her formative years in Asian countries. After years immersed in those cultures, her family returned to the States and settled down in Ohio, near relatives, where this young woman had to finish up high school.
By the time I met her, she was a young adult reflecting on her childhood and the challenge of living with a kind of hidden diversity—she looked like a typical white Midwestern girl, but in many ways felt Asian. I asked for an example of when she might have felt differences, and she talked about high school kids in Ohio “cruising.” She didn’t understand the past-time at all: piling into cars and driving slowly, aimlessly, through town.
“How is that fun?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s what my friends and I did growing up,” I admitted. “What would you and your friends do for fun when you were growing up overseas?”
“Oh, maybe on a free day a bunch of us would get together and rent a junk,” she said, “sail to a little island and spend the day lounging around, swimming, and having a picnic together.”
“Ah,” I said. “Yes, I can see how high school kids in Ohio would have a hard time imagining that.”
Even I did, and I have a vivid imagination.
I thought of her today as I captured some of the rural landscape just outside our neighborhood.
I grew up on a farm.
And attended a university only 30 minutes from that farm.
After college, I moved two hours away.
Same state.
Same landscape.
All these years, and I’m still here…
surrounded by the same crops…
spotting the same wildflowers…
It’s all so familiar to me, so ordinary, it’s easy to cruise right past.
And miss the beauty.
When I got home this afternoon, I thought about it some more.
About living here all this time.
I don’t regret this ordinary life, but I do try to imagine…
what it would be like…
to rent a junk for a day.
Photos © 2011 Ann Kroeker.
I love learning about your far from ordinary life, Ann. My sister and I learned about cruising when we lived in Altus, Oklahoma. And thanks for the junk boat link. I never knew about this past time.
I married that Belgian Wonder and STILL live in the American Midwest! 🙂
The closest town to the farm where I grew up had very little to cruise around. We’d go slowly through the McDonald’s parking lot, down to a run-down strip mall, and loop back around because that was about it. Then we’d buy some fries and drive home to our farms.
The junk boat excursion sounds so…exotic…by comparison.
I’ve always wanted to leave Texas, but I’ve lived in a 300-mile radius my whole life.
Maybe we should trade lives for a month. I’ve only been to Texas once (Laity Lodge last year). My state isn’t all that interesting…but it’s different from Texas. And we did just get some rain…
I, on the other hand, wonder what it is like to live in one area for a lifetime. I always pictured I’d live forever where I grew up, in Washingtn State, but God and my husband had other ideas: South America, Africa, and now Missouri. It’s been interesting, but still — I wonder what it’s like to stay put. I’ll never know what your experience is, and you’ll never know mine. The important thing is that both are good, both are blessed.
Linda
Ah…good point. A local author named Scott Russell Sanders wrote a book called Staying Put. I have the book on my shelf (haven’t read it yet), and the title alone sticks with me, because like it or not it’s what I’ve done.
Ann – I love this post. I’ve lived a relatively small part of my life outside of a 25-mile radius not too far from where you grew up. It does make a person take some things for granted, that’s for sure. But it also makes a person, that place where we’ve lived all these years. It’s part of you, part of me.
Ann – I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS – every word, every picture. Thank you so much for this window into your world – which is a lovely world, indeed. It is funny how what we’re used to can so often lose its luster, making us immune to the beauty of our ordinary, every day lives. No way is this ordinary to me – I have to drive a little to see this much open space and agriculture. It’s all around us here on the central coast of CA, (the agriculture part) but it takes some doing to get the long expanse of sky and land that you see every day. We’re both native to this state, but did live in Africa for a couple of years, early in our marriage. We raised our kids within 20 miles of both of our own homes and moved 125 miles north after the youngest one was married. I like being anchored to a place – and I like to travel, too. But it’s alway, always good to come home.
I’m pretty sure my teenage son is out cruising tonight down the same 3-lane highway his dad and I used to cruise when we were around his age. It was a 4-lane then… Still the thing to do in these parts. I remember good long visits with friends on those drives. Love this post and the images. Looks a lot like home.
We meet and marry persons from different worlds or at least different areas of the world new to us and we wonder how did this come about? Then we stay put, perhaps travel but return to our home place. Is this ordinary, is this happenstance? Is this only coincidence and by odds of the throw of the dice – – that our lives are played out like the script of a play? God’s plan is the reason and his plans are not ordinary or run of the mill. They are normal for him and also for us. You are certainly not common or ordinary in His sight!
This stirs up a yearning in me, Ann…I’ve always lived in Southern California, except for that year spent in Polynesia. But we moved a few times. And I’ve uprooted my adult life more than once.
You know those “you know you grew up in….” groups popping up all over Facebook? I wouldn’t know which one to join.
I think I would like the rootedness of living in a place that went generations-deep in my family.
I rented a junk once, but I took it back to Avis.
Okay…mildly funny.
What is “fun” definitely varies from culture to culture. And you post displays the multi cultural mix of what we call entertainment.