Ours

Charted territory began to cause problems. So, as the equally-yoked wife of a farmer that my mother was, she bundled her babies, buckled our bodies in the car seats – mine one-size bigger for the almost one-year older that I am – and in the direction of the Monroe, NC, courthouse we proceeded.

Our land was in deed ours, but the government still and always will own the particulars. So knowing, via extensive paper trail, more about the plot than we did ourselves, the topography maps storeroom in the basement of that corinthian-columned building was our destination.

The irony, you see, is kinesthetic. A map is not a territory, but in our 4-year-old bodies, the 3-dimensionality confused our developing senses: our fingers, a kibitzer to the eyes.

Momma borrowed the county’s version of our farm to take home for water table research, buckled us into place, and we faded out of the city and its brown, tactile knowledge into the real land where dirt was dirt.