A Sense of Belonging

On Sunday morning as we walked out after the sermon, a man who's known me since I was born stopped me for a chat. We'll call him Ken, since that's his real name.

"I saw your picture on display at the fair," he told me.

"My picture?" I was puzzled. I hadn't entered anything in the fair for about eight years. Living so far away from the home town makes these hometown kinds of things difficult.

"There was a school portrait on display from about 1924. Your grandma was in that class and I looked at the picture, and I said, look at that, there's Heidi."

Ken tells me regularly, at least as regularly as I drag us to church, that my daughter looks exactly like I did. He can't stop mentioning it because he claims every time he sees her, he thinks it's me, then gets a shock when he realizes that I am not a little kid anymore!

He knows what he's talking about; he carbon copied himself three times. His oldest son is a year younger than me, with his own kids, and guess what? I can see Ken in his grandson.

Not only has he known me for my whole life, he knew my grandparents. In fact, during the church service, another man celebrated his 80th birthday. My Dad presented him with a gift and noted that this old man and his wife were one of the first marriages that my Grandpa performed, almost 60 years ago.

Some people feel oppressed by the small town connections. They feel it as a contriction, or a weight. I feel it like a very heavy comforter, knotted and sewn by little old ladies in flower print dresses and white coverings on their heads. I like it.