Generations

Rooting out where I’m from 

only gets me as far as the 

prairie where my grandfather 

homesteaded. Where the grasses of the prairie were tamed with strength and determination. Where he built a home for his young wife. Where his children, my dad and my uncles were born. 

But those are only the roots of one tree. 

On that prairie my mother’s grandparents 

arrived to build their lives with the railway. 

Her parent’s lives were a dairy, more farms, 

schools and church. And from those young 

saplings, generations of children have been born. 

I don’t know that we make a forest. 

But I do know that from these 

pioneer trees, saplings still grow 

and learn to become the pioneers 

for each generation. Generations, 

foreign to me with their technology, 

will build new worlds to marvel at 

and explore. 

But we are all under the same blue sky, 

some of us still on the prairie of our grandparents.

“We need to remember across generations 

that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.”

~ Gloria Steinem