This is Home : Part 1

I left the office today a little after 5:30 p.m. Golden sunlight lit up the autumn colors dotting Madison, flushing vibrance into leaves and contrasting the shadows cast by buildings, cars parked along the curb, and the people walking from the former to the latter. As I drove back to the Country Inn & Suites where I'd been staying on and off for the past month, the Switchfoot song "This is Home" came on over 102.5. I'd only heard the song 387 time before, but for whatever reason, the lyrics resonated with me today, and shucks-a-doozey it reminded me that I'm wayyy overdue for a blog update.

{Refresher for your Pleasure}

All through college, the one question all new people asked was, "So where are you from?" Ugh. I hated that question. You see, as I'm sure most of you are aware, I don't have a pretty answer for that. My first handful of years were spent as an army brat; when I was nine my mom packed up my sis and me and whisked us off to Kansas, leaving my dad in Wisconsin. From then on I spent the school year at mom's, and the summers and larger holidays at dad's. My work and summer beach memories were ingrained in WI; my formative school days and self-stretching was founded in KS; how could I exclusively claim one as 'home,' when they, in some sense to me, both were? ... But how do you explain all that to a politely curious stranger without going into an autobiographical monologue? Some days I was simply from "The moon."

Recap: For those of you unaware, I graduated from university this past May with my B.A. in English. Come mid June, I began working for a company called Hartung Brothers Inc., which I'd gotten my foot in the door with two years ago as a summer job. HBI contracts with canning companies such as Del Monte, Green Giant, Seneca Foods, etc. to grow raw vegetable and root crops such as peas, green beans, lima beans, sweet corn, cucumbers, peppers, beets, carrots, and seed corn. [I wish she'd demanded a quarter for every person who asked how an English major ended up with an agronomy job. We could have paid off her student loans by now.] Because my employment is seasonal, I expected to work with HBI through early August at best. The idea my brain cooked up was to work until they quit paying me (a.k.a. when harvest was over), figuring it would be a good opportunity to earn some money right away after graduation so I'd be okay when student loans kicked in come November, and in the meantime hunt for a job in my field of study. Welll... I started in peas in central Wisconsin, and ended in peas in Door County, WI. For peas I was the crew van driver (imagine being the only girl driving around a van of 12 men at noon and midnight every day... 2 crews of 12 men each, 6 migrants and 6 WI locals per crew) [Crikes has she got some stories...], and a pre-grade inspector (which meant I was getting up at the crack of dawn to pick and run samples from numerous fields, which determined what fields were ready to be harvested).

When peas wrapped up in early August (as anticipated), I was thrilled to learn my supervisors were pleased with my work ethic, and after a brief interview with my supervisors' boss, I was asked to stay on for snap beans as a pre-grade and load grade inspector (load grades determined the quality of the beans actually being harvested/shipped to the canning companies, and locked in what the grower would be paid). In addition to having more hours, I was given a company vehicle (a beautiful white 2010 chevy silverado pickup) [Which she affectionately named Kelvin], a company gas card (wheee! no more paying for gas!!), and a company cell phone (and this is all in addition to the fact that HBI was already covering my housing since I started with them). [Needless to say, she was feeling very spoiled. In a good way.] I worked with snap beans in Door County, WI, and on days that were slower for snap beans, I also helped my previous supervisors from peas with the lima bean pre-grading, which was going on at the same time.

Nearing the end of DC snap beans, word on the street was that the people working with seed corn in central WI and in the Arena, WI, area were planning on stealing me. Sure enough, once the beans had only a couple fields left to harvest, I was told to drive down to central WI again and work with the seed corn people--without really being told anything about what I'd be doing or how long I'd be gone for. I ended up filling out Bill of Lading reports in the field, and coordinated between the dump-cart drivers, semi truck drivers, and dispatch, making sure the correct trucks left in the correct order with the correct trailer numbers and amount of seed corn for the processing plant. It was by far the easiest thing I'd had to do so far for HBI, since I was basically sitting in an air conditioned vehicle in a corn field all day [being hit on by truck drivers], as opposed to trekking through pea or bean fields at 5 a.m. pulling samples.

When seed corn started slowing down the last week of September, I figured I was finally done (and would have to find a more permanent job). September 24th & 25th I had my first weekend off since I'd started working back in June. The friday before was my last day in seed corn, and on monday I was supposed to have a meeting with the head of HR and my peas/beans boss in the corporate office in Madison. At the meeting, the HR head surprised me by asking if I'd like to accompany him to university career fairs over the next month. The two of us would represent the company while searching out intern candidates for next summer. We ended up going to universities in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa. In addition to that, my peas/beans boss had some office/computer projects he was hoping I could tackle for him, so between career fairs and said projects, I've been either on the road or working out of the corporate office in Madison this past month. I've been told by both the HR head and my boss that they would like me back next year starting in early spring, which is a good feeling, because I don't have to worry about floundering for a job if something else doesn't come up this winter. And I've highly enjoyed spending these past few weeks getting to know the people in the office, and was thrilled to have other women to talk to after X solid months of working with only males. It's funny how an 8 to 5 job feels so easy after working 8 to 18 hour days in the field. Done at 5? So early? Crazy!

And that brings us full circle.

So what makes today's drive from the office to the hotel significant? Why did the nearly-abused and overplayed Switchfoot song strike a chord today? Well... because tomorrow is my last day with HBI for the season. After tomorrow... I'm going home.

I've been living out of a suit case [lies! duffle bag.] since June, and my company truck has become a wardrobe on wheels. [And yes, I've been with Snowl this entire time. I can vouch for this.] I've met a ton of wonderful people in each division I've worked in, and I know some of them will stick with me even when I'm gone. [What would we do without facebook and email?] I was even blessed enough this past month+ to get to know an amazing young man who has officially raised the bar in my dating standards... he reminded me that there are good, hard working men in the world who know how to treat women like the precious souls they are; I hope our paths cross many, many more times.

While working for Hartung, whenever I was on the road 'away from home,' I received a per diem to cover basic food expenses. But their version of 'home' qualified as anywhere with family; so staying with my dad, with a cousin in Madison, at an Aunt's campsite, at a friend's in the area... these all qualified as 'home.'

Now it's time to go 'home': back to Door County, where my vehicle has been sitting since beans; back to Sturgeon Bay, where my dad and the kiddos are waiting for a send-off; up to the U.P. in Michigan, to see my grandparents I wasn't able to visit with all summer because of crazy work schedules; back to Springfield (swinging through a couple other MO towns to see dear friends on the way!) to revisit all my wonderful peeps still holding down the fort; and finally back to Kansas, to see my cat. [Ha.] ...and my mom, sis, and family there too, of course. <3 Because this (as in, all of the above, everywhere that holds someone I love), this is home.