Corn

As we drove, the gentle sway of the wind pushed our car gently from the white dotted line in the center to the solid white line on the left and back. I ignored my peripheral vision, focusing on the trees passed outside my window. A wooden fence with a barbed wire fence, I couldn’t see the barbs but I knew they were there. Little trees, big trees, ugly trees. We change lanes and my view is blocked by the dirt covered side of a truck. White plates attached together with little white dots.

When we passed the truck after a while, the trees weren’t there anymore. It was corn. Fields of golden corn, I could see the ears, clinging to the stalk. The rows extended for a long distance, golden seeded tips of plants. They were so neatly lined up, one after another like a well behaved preschool line. Corn field after corn field passed us. Separated by thin little dirt roads and lines of trees. Sometimes a drainage ditch.

If I turned my head far enough to the side, I could see the lines that didn’t have corn in them. The uninhabited spaces. Ears of corn stuck out from the sides of the rows, outliers. A few of them, sticking out into the hallways of the corn field.

Some years, when we drove by the corn fields, the corn was green. Sometimes it was raining. Sometimes it was brown and cut down. Sometimes it was gold, like this year.

My dad had told me that some corn was for animals, and other corn was for people. I think that the corn for people is called sweet corn, because it’s sweet, obviously. But I couldn’t tell from the road which type of corn was which. I didn’t know what they looked like, the different types.

I just watched them pass. A silent observer from the road, simply a passerby.

It was always in the car, with my family listening to audio books or my sister reading. Sometimes my parents were talking, sometimes we were eating. The fields of corn always came at different times of day in our trek across the US. Colorado to New York. Two or three days.

Sometimes, I was asleep when we passed the corn. I didn’t worry though, because I knew I’d see it the next year. The same field, the same corn every year.

One day, when I was older, I noticed the corn. Not with my family, not on a roadtrip.

With a man that I loved, we were riding. A bike. Up by his house in Wellington.

We were riding together, my feet on little foot pegs. The click of changing gears.

The corn was green. It looked the same as the corn near the highway. It was so familiar I almost didn’t notice it. But this time, the people I was with were different.

I was experienced, I was older. I was still me. But I had different interests, I was old but had some newness as well.

I couldn’t identify the feeling. I was happy, more than anything. I was taking a walk down the old memory lane, that too. I was intrigued and curious, yes.

That day the corn changed for me. Now we’re in the car, my family and I. Driving. I’m waiting for the corn. I’m always going to wait to see the corn with the man I love again. 

Always waiting.

Sometimes, you’ll see the corn with a new person, like with the man I love. Embrace the change, don’t let it scare you away. Don’t let your old familiar habits take control of your life. You only have this chance once, to see your corn. The neat little rows, golden or not.

What does your corn represent? Happiness for me.