Hungry Hungry Caterpillar / Piece. Love. Pizza!

Husband: Who says you can't go home?
Me: Well, actually, that guy, over there. . . .
(redux!)

It was a day with adventures that took us roving far and wide. My little sister has been sorting through stuff at my parents' house, and I told her I'd be down to help go through some of Mom's things. 

This day, with clear skies and beautiful weather, was our pick for travel. And a good choice it was, with one exception, which - once again! - involved closed roads and detours! But we'll get to that.

First, look at who my husband found munching on the milkweed at the front of the patch: a hungry, hungry caterpillar! It is already quite large, and I'm not sure where it's been these past days or even week or two. But here it is now, chomping away like a champ, making up for lost time! Hooray!

I snapped a few photos of the caterpillar as we were putting stuff into the car, getting ready to travel. I planted corms in the morning, watered all the stuff (it's been so dry here of late), and then we packed up and headed for McAlisterville. 

Our plans for the day included, in this order, we hoped: a stop at Sal's Original Italian Pizza in McAlisterville for a hoagie for lunch, and a chef salad for the cooler; a visit with my sister Pat, in assisted living at Magnolia Personal Care Center, next to Brookline Manor; a stint of organizing and sorting at Mom & Dad's house; and possibly (this might be a long shot) a swim at Greenwood Furnace or Whipple Dam on the way home.

We traveled down route 322 without incident. But when we got to the Stop 35 exit, we discovered that route 35 was closed right by the McDonald's next to the Sheetz. Two men blocked the road, waving us to turn LEFT and go up the hill to what used to be Roller Junction, back in the day. Wait. What!? Where?

They rerouted us onto Butchershop Road, which took us back out to the Juniata River! Hey, we're most definitely heading in the wrong direction! We stuck with it and ended up doing a grand tour of the mills. Cuba Mills. Oakland Mills. Jericho. 

We were starving, and had hoped to have lunch in McAlisterville first, but it didn't seem possible to get there easily. So we stopped to visit my sister Pat at Magnolia Care Center instead. I learned there, from a lady with a cell phone, that somebody had rolled a vehicle down the hill by the Brookline Manor sign and taken out a pole, which was blocking the road. 

Note that this was our second detour in less than a week! Friday night's detour gave us a grand tour of the backroads of Cambria County, which is my husband's home county. Thursday afternoon's detour gave us a tour of the backroads of Juniata County, which is my home county. I had a visit with my sister, and then we tried going out to route 35 and discovered it was open, hallelujah! 

And so we went on to Sal's for a very LATE lunch! I put a photo in the extras there of a sign that made me laugh: Piece. Love. Pizza. I can dig that scene! You will be happy to learn that my husband and I split a really fresh and wonderful Italian hoagie there, and got a chef salad to go, for later. (Note to self: next time, make sure the salad dressing is upright so it doesn't spill in the cooler.)

Then it was off to my parents' house for sorting. My sister had put a bunch of boxes of fabric and my mother's cassette collection on the front porch, and I went through all of that. I don't do a lot of sewing anymore, but I did want to take some of the prettier pieces, so I filled a Rubbermaid container with fabric, in my mother's honor. There are MANY MORE boxes and I don't know what we'll do with it all.

I also went through her cassettes and picked about two dozen to take with me. Her taste is mostly country, but there were some Bruce Springsteens mixed in there too! Both my mother and my dad adored music. She was more Rose Colored Glasses on the kitchen radio; he was more Johnny Cash, with the bass line turned up until the windows rattled.

My husband and I visited with my sister, and we shared stories about our family. It is almost a year since my parents passed, and made their journey to Heaven pretty much hand-in-hand. We miss them a lot, because we loved them so. And why not. They were there for 90-some years, and they were practically fixtures on the landscape. It's really weird to go there without having them there. It feels wrong; all wrong.

We talked about last year, and the events leading up to their passing. Julie remembered Mother saying to her, just a few weeks before she left us: "I have a secret; I'm going HOME." 

We talked about the connection between our mom and dad, which was other-worldly. We have never seen anything like it before, or since. And I recalled, wistfully, that when we would visit them, just before we left, my dad would always say, "Come back when you can stay longer."

My mother was an accumulator, and so there is lots and lots more to go through. I am cut from the same cloth, and I try to resist it, but I do end up bringing more stuff into OUR house, too. So I sorted. And I sorted. My husband had a book and a chair. I told him he might walk back to Lost Creek if the bugs weren't too bad in the woods; in the end, he didn't make it there.

And so we piled a bunch of containers into the car, with my mother's fabric, and some clothing, and music, and this and that. And I sighed, wondering where I will put it all. But I feel I owe it to her to take some of what she left, to try to make the most of it. To be respectful to her by finding the best and most useful ending for her stuff, which was so lovingly accumulated.

Finally, we were ready to go. And it was later than we thought, and so there was to be no swim on the way home, after all. But I was standing in the driveway by the car, as I did so often, when we said goodbye. Sometimes I would do a little dance to make my mother laugh. Sometimes, I'd just wave.

And I look back. And there is my little sister, standing in the first of the late-day shadows, by the house we lived in, loved in, grew up in. And she is waving to me, and I am waving back. And there are words coming out of her mouth, and I listen. What's that she's saying? "Come back when you can stay longer," she says.

These are our family's stories, these tales of Lost Creek, and those of us who grew up there, running wild in the woods and waters of central Pennsylvania. These are my stories about home.

I have two soundtrack songs. For my hungry hungry caterpillar, I've got Van Morrison, with Hungry for Your Love. For the pizza shop that we almost didn't make it to, but finally did, against all odds, here is Phil Collins with the song, Against All Odds.