Where I'm From

I'm from country folks
with four older brothers and two older sisters,
and from parents who were too old and too tired to raise a seventh.
I'm from poverty, and outhouses, and no bathtub, and laundry on a line,
and from drinking, and smoking, and loud honky-tonk music.

I'm from cutting wood to heat during the icy winter,
when plastic covered our windows, and the wind howled through the attic,
and the cold was so bitter only my nose peeked out from under a foot of blankets.
I'm from laying under a fan's cooling breeze in the midst of dog days,
and learning to swim at the local swimming hole,
and running barefoot through the gravel, and playing in the rain.

I'm from growing potatoes and corn, and snapping green beans, and canning beets,
and brothers who hunted squirrels and coons and turtles.
I'm from raising the runt of a litter of pigs,
and a calf that died,
and coon dogs,
and a dozen cats I dressed in doll clothes.

I'm from riding bikes on back country roads, and flipping go-carts,
and playing tackle football and "ghost in the graveyard" on warm summer nights.
I'm from building forts and swinging from vines deep in the woods,
and catching crawdads, and fishing.
I'm from long nights spent playing monopoly with friends,
and working puzzles with my mother,
and a long line of euchre players.
I'm from laying on the couch with my father,
his toes pinching me,
while we watched Three's Company and Gilligan's Island .

I'm from spending summers with my sister,
seining minnows to buy school clothes,
and swimming in the kiddie pool,
and seeing Cujo on the back of an old, rusted-out pickup
at the last of the drive-in theaters.
I'm from spending summers with my brother,
babysitting his children,
and riding bikes through an old country graveyard,
and licking an ice cream cone from the Dairy Mart
while watching the sun set.

I'm from Eaton High School
and nights spent cruising in my friend's convertible
visiting "Cry Baby Bridge,"
terrified that the ghost was real,
yet brave enough to play practical jokes on those who thought it wasn't.
I'm from the love of a best friend, the sister of my heart,
and phone conversations that lingered over nothing,
and playing skip-bo in lounge when I should have been doing homework,
and double dating for prom, and picking my husband out of a yearbook.

I am from another life—another universe.
transformed by God,
an education,
a career,
a little yellow house at the back of a cul-de-sac,
a husband, and two wonderful children.


* This poem was written as a part of an assignment for a college class & is based on the poem "Where I'm From" by George Ella Lyon.  Visit this site for more information.  http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html