Thoughts of Cedar Ridge

 We ran wild through our deep woods
Trees perched  thick and green and had looked over our bluff for generations..
Their roots ours, deep and strong..
When looking towards horizon off the bluff you saw a world away...
One of those trees down slope towards the river was a gigantic beautiful white Sycamore.
A rookery of blue herons had also nested there during warm months.
Coming back to our tree every year.
We could tell them apart and named them.
It was always so sad to see that one had not made it through the long flight home.

We ran and played and had adventures.
We found caves and became. spelunkers...
And we found cave etchings on its wall, what a great day.
I remember the emtion tracing lines that my Native American ancestors had etched into the limestone.
It was like shaking hands with history.
Thanking those that brought us home.

We caught crawdads and snakes..fish.
There were hundreds of turtles with pink fingernail polish initials roaming our woods.
We caught fireflies and tore their glowing rearends off and stuck them to our fingers pretending they were rings with rare gemstones
I am sorry little fireflies.

We swam in the river.
Taking a wild swing off the rope and plunging into the Pomme de Terre.
And as I got older i rolled around those banks with a country boy between my thighs.
Skinny dipped and explored our bodies.
Then laid back and had philisophical discussions while contemplating just how far that sky went, and attemted to count the stars.
Sometimes though the isolation and that expanse of night sky made me feel very alone.
Especially if the whiporwills were using their haunting lonesome call.

On a summer day you would hear the crack of a baseball bat.
You could hear hoards of neighbors kids splashing in the pool.
There weren't many, and none my age.
We were miles away from the nearest town.
There were always about 7 muts barking and chompin at peoples tires as they drove down the dirt road that lead to our home.
The weekend before I started kindergarten, my friend Cindy and I were playing with a new litter of puppies.
We were letting them suck our chins.
When we got back inside our parents looked at us a long time then started laughing.
Those puppies had sucked huge hickies on our chins and we had to go to school the next day with our entire chins deep blue and purple. Lol

At Christmas we went out into the woods and cut the prettiest cedar we could find, decorated the tree each year listening to Willie Nelson and Mama made cookies and peanut brittle. .
We strung popcorn and cranberries.
And talked about the memories behind each ornament.

We built a second home on our many acres.
And my Grandma and Grampa moved into our old house.
I miss them very much, but what a wonderful time having them there.
I learned to cook next to my Gramas side.
She was a voracious reader and would give me her favorites like Little Women, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Gone with the Wind.
My Grampa gave me his first shotgun for Christmas one year.
So that year became our anual target contest.
I won 5 years in a row with my 12 gauge.
My Uncles, Brother, and the rest having to suffer being outshot by a girl. Teehee!
My Grampa beamed with pride, he taught me well.

We had horses...cows at times.
Oh and a very ornery goat.
When company came she would climb on top of their car and leave goat pellets.
And we had a posessed turkey at one point that chased company, bit, and was so damn mean we named him Cold duck from the evil character in Lonesome Dove.
I lost boyfriends to Cold Duck damn that turkey!!
They refused to come back from fear..

This was home. In every sense of the word.
And it was suposed to be like that forever.
But one day at work I got a phone call and with one fell swoop, home was no longer ours.
I never got to say goodbye.

My father it turned out had been taken in by the FBI.
He had stolen almost 2 million from friends and family.
He had a long list of charges including money laundering, fraud, bad checks...
The list went on and on.
They had taken it all.
My woods, my special places, the family of Herons, the river....
Gone.
And my father would be gone too for 6 years in prison.
My parents were soon divorced.
I felt lost.
I have been looking for home ever since.
I have yet to find it, but I have found someone who is home to me.
I guess wherever you love unconditionally can me home.

I keep those memories of Cedar Ridge tucked away carefully in my heart.
I take them out from time to time to remember Jenny girl and her childhood.
She seems almost like someone else, and not me.
I lost so much of her along the way.