Celebrating Independence in Idaho

4th of July weekend was one of the better weekends of my days. It was everything a 4th of July should be.....I felt very full of celebration, freedom, hope, God, love, blood, and the pursuit of happiness. Rexburg has become a place for my soul. Some places still catch my breath, some places still make me breathe easier than I have in weeks. Rexburg is like the trail for me. There are trees, rocks, trails, people that make the air sacred, the soil different from other soil. Places like the Bloody Basin and Cherry Creek and Sharon's backyard are the kind of places that possess people to take jars of sand and bags of rocks to carry their sacredness with them wherever they go. I have heartstrings there. I have broken pieces of myself scattered throughout, but they are tenderly broken, tenderly mended. Not like Logan, where parts of me have shattered and been bit....I do not think of Logan fondly. It is one of the only homes I've had that never became home to me. I met kindred spirits there, I found hope and light and reason there, but I do not care to visit the soil there. The Logan cemetery, maybe, but even that place's peace is too uneven.

These are the things I did that I loved about last weekend. The pictures are from last weekend and from the summer of 2005, when Sharon and her land embraced me home from Japan. The shish-kabob pictures are from mere days after I returned from Tokyo. It was one of the fondest reunions next to when I greeted my mom and my family at the airport and they drove me back home after being away for so long. I am so blessed by my family and friends. I am so blessed by what the different homes of my life have kept and remembered for me.

Things I Loved:

1. My car got egged the morning of the 4th. I drove from Layton to Rexburg with egg yolk running down the side of my car, egg shell stuck to dried egg whites on my side-view mirror. I embraced the rebellion of the boys/girls who attacked my haughty 2000 Hyundai Elantra. I feel like it was an initiation hazing for her. I'm going to call her Elaine. I think her spirit mingled with Charlie's in whatever pre-existence engine souls come from.
2. The Rexburg, Idaho, Independence Day Parade. They drove a tank down the streets and sprayed everyone in the vicinity with gallons of high-powered water. I loved how heated up and political that made Sharon. I love that the bike cop was Chompers from the College Ave days of 2001. Chompers, the security guard at the old Spori before it burned down...or was he the security guard at the Spori as it was being built? My years are jumbling together. Those were the Christopher Bailey days...my arch nemesis who sat on my chest and stuffed my mouth with Brazilian nuts and threatened me with swirlies every Sunday. I had arch nemeses in those days.
3. Sharon and her Writing Center toadies. The David O. McKay Writing Center kids...what a clan...what a cult. We are all blood brothers. We're like Shriners. They ought to wear a red fez to match their little black vests. I used to keep candy in those vest pockets and then forget about it. That would really peeve Jared off.
4. Lying on the grass. Independence and freedom is the ability to lie on the grass if you want to. Lie on the grass with a humongous 59 cent drink from Horkley's. Stare at the overcast Idaho sky and look at Chandler's bird books, breaking in your new sneakers with grass stains.
5. Madison County's Whoopee Days Rodeo. My vegan sister doesn't need to know I went or that I enjoyed it. I love love love that I went to a Rexburg rodeo with Jen Russell Parkins little brother. It was as close as I could get to Jen. It was pretty darn close too! Neither one of them are rodeo people and getting either one of them at a rodeo is a success! Jen, I miss you!! The rodeo was great, even when my allergies kicked in just before the bulls came out. I love making whoopee with Madison County.
6. The Whoopee Days fireworks. We didn't make it to Idaho Falls for any of the Melaleuca Extravaganzique but the Rexburg 'works were charming and perfect in their own way. One explosion.........another explosion.........another.....two at one time!........one explosion.........one.........another......ALL OF REST AT ONCE!!! BOOM! FLASH! KICK IN THE PANTS GLORY! More lying in the grass. Running in the grass, lying in the grass, switching back and forth.
7. I sidestepped out after the fireworks and saw Old Friend Troy. We watched Rosemary's Baby and ate pizza in one of Rexburg's crappier top floor apartments. I had been there five years earlier when it was girls' housing. I had studied Spanish on the balcony. The movie was excellent. I'm glad I wasn't pregnant when I saw it.
8. We finally chainsawed up the trees that fell in Sharon's yard. Take that Emily L. Pew! (She didn't think me + chainsaw = good idea)
9. Meeting up with Sharon's toadies in Rexburg's big fat real theater/bowling-alley and watching WALL-E--a surprisingly fantastic
and I-will-stand-behind-it film. I highly recommend it. I laughed, I cried, I watched it by myself on the front row next to two five-year-olds because it was too dark to find my new friends. I laughed at all the places the five-year-olds did and felt proud of that.
10. I love that two .9 mm pistols showed up at the pinochle table at the exact moment two ghostly white kittens appeared on the edge of Sharon's porch, walking towards where we sat talking into the smoke of the fire, roasting marshmallows.
11. I love that the cops were called, that Megan, Sharon, and I boxed up the kitties and drove them to Idaho Falls at a quarter to midnight and rescued the pink-eyed sickly white white kittens to the Humane Society drop-off, with cat food and styrofoam bowls of water. I love that two huge collared owner-less dogs ran around us while we secured the kittens in their metal quarters. I love that we stopped for slurpees on the way home.
12. I love talking to blood sisters.
13. I loved driving home....the road between Layton and Rexburg will always be a time for reflection and processing for me. It is a highly symbolic road, signifying so much travel, so much movement, but it always leads me right back to one of those two homes. I remember when I first traveled it at 18-years-old in August 2000. I remember thinking, "Wow, cinder blocks to make your bed go higher! How brilliant!" My roommate, Erin Hamp, and I watched the first episode of the second season of Survivor that night, when reality TV was so new and strange...it would never last, we all thought. It was both our first time for the show. We ended up watching the whole season in our apartment that semester, and we would occasionally vote people out of the apartment. Mostly me, because I left dishes all over the house. But I was the funny one, so they always let me back in. That first night in Rexburg I ate corn-on-the-cob and orange sherbet and vanilla ice cream and I cried myself to sleep. But even as I cried myself to sleep, I remember I still acknowledged that cinder blocks truly were a brilliant idea.