I Think Dorothy Had It Right

I could never understand the hype behind The Wizard of Oz.  This whiny girl from the middle of nowhere Kansas gets hijacked by a tornado and swept off to weird-o land where all of these bizarre things happen to her just to realize it's a dream.  I never understood the frenzy over it.  Sure, I like the singing and dancing and the munchkins but I don't necessarily need to watch it every weekend or own the figurines (not aiming jabs at anyone who does-it's just not my thing).  There was a point in my short life that I couldn't, for the life of me, understand how she could want to go home as much as she did.  I mean, she had the awesome shoes, three amazing friends that would do anything for her, and she was damn-near the Princess of Oz, why would she want to go back?  And then I grew up a little...saw that Kansas really wasn't that bad and that even though Oz was shiny and new and exciting, it really wasn't all it was cracked up to be.   I grew up in a small town in Southern Illinois that only has one stop light...and not the "proper" green, yellow, red kind.  It simply is a blinking red light at a four way intersection.  I never saw my hometown as somewhere to be preferred or even missed.  But I didn't view it as a place to escape like some of my fellow classmates (and countless others before and after me).  I could simply take it or leave it.  I was indifferent.  At one point in my life I saw my future there, I wanted my future there.  I had centered it on a relationship with a high school sweetheart and I was just fine with that.  I had envisioned teaching in my home high school agriculture classroom, living on a family farm, and seeing my mama and daddy anytime I wanted.  But college came and this sparrow spread her wings and flew.  That high school relationship amicably came to an end and I began a new one with, in this case, the tornado.  I don't intend that to mean he was destructive or bad in any way.  He swept me off my feet and away to a land that was foreign to me.  Sure, it was similar to where I grew up; it was rooted in agriculture, had an empty classroom calling to me, and, of course had him...it was all I wanted and what I thought I would always want.  But life goes on, things happen; children are born, siblings pass away, parents get older and this Dorothy, much like the original, has started to wish she were back home in that small, blinking-red-light town where church starts promptly at ten, the boys basketball games are a hot ticket, and mama has supper every night...complete with pie.   It's not that the Land of Oz has changed, it's still the same, and in some ways better.  But Dorothy has started to look at her life and realize that the awesome shoes and the Princess status doesn't make up for the missed time with her family or the lessons, traditions, and morals that come with it.  How when her son asks about Grandma and Grandpa her eyes water because she's scared he will never get to really know them.  About how it seems like time slows down and life is less stressful "back home" and she can only dream of her son walking through the doors of the same elementary school she attended and of finding their own spot for Sunday service.  She thinks about what it would be like for her son to grow up with his cousins only five minutes down the road and Aunts and an Uncle who would be there for him (and Dorothy) in a heartbeat if needed.  She dreams of him having that small-town, slow-down kind of upbringing that she had.  She yearns for him to learn lessons from stubborn halter calves, mean laying hens, and countless bales loaded and unloaded, just as she did.  As this Dorothy looks at her life it's not that she wouldn't have wanted the tornado to sweep her away; he's been very much a huge part of who she has become...but she finds herself clicking her heels together daily whispering "There's no place like home..." wishing that it would be as simple as that and she would be on the back porch swing of a little cabin on a lake listening to Grandpa and his grandsons fish off of the bank and grandma cooking in the kitchen.   And every time one of those thoughts enters my mind I think "Dorothy had it right all along...There's no place like home."