Shoelaces for Josie

I’ve not been much of a root person in my life. Not really. Not the type of roots I’m talking about here and, oddly and quite suprisingly, the roots I’m longing for these days. I think in many cases, roots are a mindset. No, not a mindset – roots are an emotion, this thing that beats in time with your heart. One can be in a place for a long time and never put down roots. One can just bump along in their life and never let anything or anyone take much of a hold on their lives or on their hearts.

In the same manner, one can be in a place for a short time and develop more roots than one knows what to do with – especially if that one is not normally a root-person and doesn’t quite know how to handle root-growth.

I was thinking about the town I grew up in earlier today. The place I went to school, where I had my junior prom and my first experience with love. The place I learned how to run – literally and figuratively – and where I became good at both. The place I worked to earn money for college, and the place I left five years ago with barely a step inside the town limits since.

I lived outside of that town for 18 years. For nearly two decades, I made my way around every backroad and knew every farmer and started the journey of becoming the person who sits here today but there were never roots. Not roots. Not the type I’ve finally admitted I’m looking for.

I don’t know why my roots aren’t back there in Rural Midwest. It was the only thing I knew for 18 years, but even when I was there, living it and experiencing it, I knew my roots had never grown. And back then I wasn’t looking for roots. I didn’t want roots. I wanted excitement and adventure and experiences and stories.

I have those now. The stories and the adventures and the experiences. And while I’ve concluded that I will always be one of those people that things just happen to, the thought of all those things happening to me while I live in one place doesn’t bother me like it used to. And if I’m being honest, I’d have to say it is something I want.

Sometimes I look around me and I see people who have the roots I’m looking for. And while I can never have theirs – I know I’ll never be the person who lives from birth to death on the same land (quite obviously) – I’m ready to make my own roots. I think I’m ready…