Monday, March 26, 2012

The times, they are a changin'. . .

Something strange has been happening lately. 

Take yesterday for example. The sun was shining, the kids were conquering the backyard on a Summer-ish day in March, and I was attempting to do four things at once in the midst of the screen door slamming, the baby eating leaves (they look like Kale, right?), and the girls' worm-digging.

And then it happened. I picked up the sports section, scanned the headlines to find out what time the game was on, and at 4:00, I tuned in to watch said game. The KU game.

Ferdie was working, and the decision was mine entirely. So I watched and cleaned and watched and folded and watched.

All of this watching after just two nights earlier I stayed up past10:00, to catch the end of yet another KU game. I gave up sleep for that one. But I cared more about knowing the end than I did about non-baggy eyes in the a.m.

And then this: One night several months ago when I should have been sound asleep, I realized I didn't know the name of the mayor of Lenexa.  I have lived in Lenexa for almost 4 years, I enjoy politics, I think the biggest impact can be made locally, yet I did not know our leader's name.

So, I googled it. At 2 in the morning. (Mike Boehm, apparently a good guy, for anyone who might want to know).

And I've been learning history.

Several months ago on a jaunt  down I-70 to Topeka to pick up a copy of our vehicle registration, I made a side-trip to the "Brown Vs. Board of Education Museum," where desegregated schools were mandated by the Supreme Court. The so-called "Separate, but Equal" ended in Kansas.

I've learned about Quantrill's Raid in Lawrence, and how the roots of the Kansas/Missouri border wars reach back 150 years to the "Uncivil War," as one preacher aptly called it.

And I finally figured out why everyone chants "Rock Chalk, Jayhawk" at athletic events.

In the past year, I've driven some of the byways and backroads of Kansas, when I previously limited myself to heading North on I-35. In doing so, I've stumbled across breathtaking vistas, and channeled my inner Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And I've done life with families in our neighborhood and our elementary school, and the ladies in my Wednesday morning small group, and my two girlfriends who welcomed me to Kansas when I was fresh off the island and who helped me fold laundry when I thought my world was crashing and who called me and called me and called me when my world really did crash a year later, and I think this:

THESE ARE MY PEOPLE.

I am invested in their lives, and they are invested in mine.

THIS IS MY CITY.

After 3 or 4 years of feeling as if I was just passing through, taking in all the sights while I could, sampling the wares, so to speak, now I find myself saying "Oh yeah, in Kansas city we have one of the best performing arts centers in the world," or "We're getting an aquarium and Legoland," or "We've got such great restaturants here," as if it is mine.

I care about this city, because I have people I love here, and because in spite of my eldest child believing that she remembers the beaches of Saipan, Kansas is my kids' first real home. Their childhood memories will revolve around everyday life in the Guinto household and escapades with the neighborhood kids and their classmates, and when songs and sounds and scents call back memories, those stories will be set in Lenexa, Kansas. 

Thirty-some years from now, my kids might get the pleasure of having dinner with one of those old friends, as I did last week, and they'll reminisce about the old hometown and all of the characters who grew in it and how growing up there shaped them, helped form their identity, marked them for life.

I love this place, as much as I have ever loved a place.

After 5 1/2 years in Kansas, the strangest thing is happening.

I am becoming a Kansan.