to school and back

Hi ho, hi ho, off to Indiana we go. Or went. It dawned on me that we've packed kids off to college a total of 15 times in nine years. What an outlandish load of clothes and shoes, shampoo and toothpaste, books and crammed-full crates.

It's typically 90 degrees or higher every move-in day and this one was no exception. Katie and I get silly on these drives. We sing. We laugh a LOT. We take pictures. She would want you to know these are NOT HER sunglasses.

Katie's cute red-headed roommate, Maria, welcomed us warmly.

Well, how else would she welcome us?

 To reiterate: it  was over 90 degrees and their dorm has no air conditioning.

Don't they look like big-girl juniors? Cuz they are.

(I kind of wish I could live in a dorm again.)

It's always a little hard to leave my girl; I get a little twinge of mom sadness, but my pragmatic husband reminds me how much she loves Taylor U and will have a great year. Alright, ok, I'll quit being sad. See? She's not sad!

We left campus in Upland, Indiana (pop. 3900 plus dogs, cows and horses) and headed east over even less-populated roads. Following a detour, we found ourself on "Road 600 North" in eastern Indiana. Rising in the distance sat this building, which I guessed to be an old schoolhouse-turned-barn judging by the newer sliding metal door.

And I got to thinking.

If it was indeed a school say, 120 years ago, what boys and girls attended?

How far did they walk to school? Where did their teacher live?

Do their great-great-grandchildren still farm this land?

They were farm children, raised on a land that still produces corn and soybeans. 

Every time I drive here, I am awed by such simple beauty of the tidy farms.

Did any of the students from this school go to college

and maybe end up in Chicago as an attorney or doctor?

Or did they follow the life path of their parents, working the land?

Don't know why I wonder about very old places

and

people I never knew whose lives have been lived

and

whether the children minded walking two miles to school

and

what their mothers packed for lunch in their metal pails.

Or

if they wondered

if another mother might drive by their school

in 100 years

and think about them.

But I do.