Ohio Has...

Several weeks ago, on our way out of Maine, Caed asked, "So, I know Maine has lobsters and beaches and lighthouses. But what does Ohio have?"

I was tempted to answer "losing sports teams", but took the high road with an enthusiastic "we'll see when we get there!"

Well, we're here. And I admit, I'm starting to see.

1. Three months of apple picking season and farm stands on every other corner. (Did I mention we live in the country?)

2. We can get to Trader Joe's in 15 minutes. Cue the angels (in organic cotton woven robes).

3. Corn Sweet Corn. And we're talking fresh. As in picked-at-7-a.m., buy it at 9 a.m., tempted to eat it for lunch but the plan was to wait for dinner fresh.

4. Sushi. (Oh not really, not at ALL. Just seeing if you were paying attention).

5. Libraries that rock the proverbial party (albeit quietly). We've been to the library as many times in the past two weeks as we've been to Home Depot, which is somewhere in between too many freakin' times and infinity. Only instead of coming home (yet again!) with the wrong size plastic anchors or completely unusable--yet oh so energy efficient--light bulbs, we come home with another Ladybug Girl book, a new Jack & Annie book!, and Mamaphonic (a collection of essays my friend Elizabeth accurately predicted I would love.)

::

Today was Caed's first day of first grade, his first day in public school. I know that great teachers and fun school buses and sweet new friends aren't unique to Ohio. But they still count as something Ohio has, right?

And because I don't want to forget, I've compiled a comprehensive list of the information I extracted from Caed after his first day of school:

1. I made a friend from my class who is on the same bus as me, and we're going to sit together every time we go on the bus.

2. I only got one minute to eat my lunch.

3. I was only on the bus like one minute, and then BAM! I was home.

4. My friend--the same one from the bus--he sat next to me at lunch and he asked to try one of my red peppers. So I shared with him. He talks to me a lot.

5. (Upon being told that the hot lunches aren't free) Why do they expect kids to pay for lunches? Don't they know that kids don't carry around money?

6. For my one thing special about me, I told my teacher I was a lefty, and she went crazy. She said, "A lefty! A lefty! Everyone run!" But she was just being silly.

7. I played basketball at recess--it was all the older kids against me. And I won.

8. I think all the work today might have been kindergarten work. I didn't even see one compound word ALL day.

9. We got to do gym! Soccer AND basketball! But not that long really, cuz it took our teacher forever to get us organized-ed.

10. Remember in the Laura story (Little House) how the boys were giving the new teacher a hard time and not listening? Well, at my class, it was the opposite. All of us boys were quiet and shy. And the girls were the ones talking. And we boys were just looking at each other like (insert eyebrows raised facial expression).

::

Exactly four weeks ago, I pulled up in my haphazardly packed (to the hilt!) car, turned up the driveway toward the house we now call home. The propane tank, the one I forgot I'd have to take with me, lurched forward, smashing the bag of snacks and doing a number on the already brutalized dried flower arrangement. I wanted so badly then to just fast forward to a cleaned out car, and a cleaned up house (with a couch and a table and a bed that I didn't have to blow up). So here I am, four weeks later, and I know what Ohio has.

Ohio has apples turned into crisp,
backyards with more weeds than grass,
more tree frogs and crickets than you can shake a stick at,
and plenty of sticks to shake.
Ohio has summer and fall and the season in between
when you don't know whether
jeans will be too hot
or tees will be too cold.
Ohio has all of us, home for dinner,
all of us, waking up
under the same sky
and sometimes covers.
Ohio has infant Home,
Just four weeks old, but
growing like you wouldn't believe.
If this is four weeks, can you imagine four months?
And that's the crazy thing.
I totally can.

(Hooray! Longest post EVER is finally over.)