42 Hours in South Dakota

On the way out of Denver, I got caught in a stupid traffic jam. Laughable to those of you from larger cities, but still, significant enough to make me cranky before my journey even really began. I sat through one stop light about four times, and tried to distract myself with the splinter in my thumb that’s been bugging me all week. Took out the tweezer from my makeup case in the back seat and started picking away half-heartedly. I thought of Grandma Johnson, who has no patience for this kind of indirect assault on splinters. One of my earliest memories of her is from when I was about five, standing on the front patio on an otherwise happy, sunny day, her with a needle in her hand. She grabbed my finger firmly with the needle poised and said: this will hurt a lot. Then it will be better. We have to do it. She said it with a sort of force and inevitability that gave me confidence, if confidence looks a little like resignation from time to time.

I’ve been back in Denver for 52 hours now, but the slow tight ache in my heart is holding on to the Hills where I grew up. Like removing the splinter, I needed to go home. And going there really does restore me in ways that no place else can. One might even say it helps me on the way to healing, even when it sometimes hurts.