Subtitles! In Kansas?
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
Well, it's been a quiet week in Ramona. All the people we had at Thanksgiving are back home to their normal routine. And once we got all the good dishes put away, took the extra leaves out of the table, washed the sheets and aired the bedding, we were pretty much back to normal ourselves.
It is an interesting phenomena to see your family at one table. These kids growing up are a rare breed. On the one hand, they know more than I ever hope to know about computers and, on the other hand, they don't have sense to buy T-shirts long enough to cover their belly buttons in winter weather. "It's in style," they say and I swear they'll freeze.
We took our cousins' kids to the movies while they were here — at the Art Center Theater in Salina. It just so happened they were showing "Mostly Martha," a fine German film with subtitles. "Subtitles?" said the 14-year-old politely, "I didn't think they had this kind of film in Kansas!" There was a cautious pause. "I don't think we even have them in Greeley!" She hadn't seen many foreign films, we could tell. Too late we discovered that the crew would have rather seen Santa Clause II. They were gracious; but we goofed!
On the way to the movies we listened to these teenagers talk about their lives, what kind of cars they dreamed of having someday (SUVs), what kinds of horror jobs they'd done to make spending money (house-setting), what kind of challenges they faced in school (competition), and who their latest friends were (guys). We were both honored and amused.
We're honored to know these kids. Their parents inoculated them with the Ramona Bug years ago so they return season after season with their cousins to help us build floats for Fourth of July or just clear the table at Thanksgiving. The next 10 years of their lives will tell us all just how strongly they are pulled toward Ramona and nostalgia as they finish college, perhaps marry, and begin families of their own.
How impoverished our lives would be if we didn't have them to plump up the edges. We love being able to look into their faces and actually know them so well that we can tell stories about the times we've spent together.
"Remember the day we took you to Herington and I was eating sunflower seeds," this story begins. We laugh together at the memory of the little girl in the backseat with sunflower seed shells in her hair. But she didn't complain. She didn't know us very well and she wasn't going to miss out on an adventure just because soggy shells were flying into her face.
We pulled out some old slides and organized them for viewing, projecting the images onto a sheet strung across the dining room door. "What year was that?" someone was always asking, "How old were you then?" The family calculations would begin, "Let's see, that would have been at Mom's funeral." Uncle Hank begins to count down the years and the memories.
How quickly the seasons change and the generations move on down the line. It seems like yesterday that I was the gawkish girl in the front row with the white bandana on my head, holding my baby sister. And then I was the young adult with a four-year-old coming back for Grandpa's funeral. Now I am almost numbered in the older generation — depending on who is numbering.
Before we know it, the cousins will be the oldest ones and another generation of cousins' kids will be coming back to Ramona to spend another day in the country.
