Beginning with predictions, of my impending trip to Arkansas last week I wrote,

It’s likely that we’re being encouraged to move there, or to hit up a cousin for a job (or a kiss), or to explain why Kathy’s not twice-over pregnant already, or to reveal our gray roots, or to cook our Boca burgers this way, and not that; it’s equally likely that we’re having a grand time in spite of my suspicions to the contrary.

So which of those came true? The second cousin who used to be a headhunter for boarding schools said when we met her, “Did you bring your resume?” without asking whether we were even interested in teaching at a boarding school; a virile disciple of Limbaugh asked us when we were intending to reproduce; and nearly everyone suggested we might as well move to Arkansas as stay in Iowa. No one scrutinized our scalps, and no one told us how to eat, although nearly everyone began at least one sentence with, “I’m a meat eater,” or “I like meat too much…”—One side effect of being a vegetarian, which Kathy learned a decade ago and I’ve discovered this year, is that others become conscious of their own gustatory habits in ways that they never imagined becoming conscious. They develop a vocal tic which excuses them for not being vegetarian. It’s always a strange moment to me because it comes across like an smoker who can’t quit the smokes. To consume flesh is suddenly marked abnormal, when in fact they mean that what is abnormal is to be vegetarian. It happens no matter whose family we visit. Kathy said on the drive home—a drive in which we witnessed dozens upon dozens of red tail hawks staking out the highway, waiting for a rabbit or mouse to show his head—“One reason I like Iowa City is that it’s a place where I’m not weird!” In that respect alone, that Searcy still has no non-Mexican restaurant with significant veggie dishes, while Iowa City has two major vegetarian restaurants and nearly every place caters to veggie clientele reveals how the world in which we live is different from the world in which we just visited.

We also had a good time. It’s been too long since I’ve seen my family. All my fears of last week and last month were built out of a paranoia that I think came to being due to absence and distance. I created a family that was a caricature of what it truly is. Yes, my family can be painfully passive aggressive (witness the kissing cousins and mom’s conflicts with my grandmother); yes, my family has had an amazing growth spurt that makes it a very different animal than it was when I last lived in its clutches. But after the shock of the first day, I began to feel at home there.

I regret that it was not a long enough trip to get anything more than superficial impressions. Several cousins have grown up in ways that surprise and please me, including one, a Marine, who while sometimes ridiculous also has all the markings of growing up wise. Several aunts and uncles haven’t grown up at all. I know for certain that I will lose my last great-grandparent before I turn 30, which seems a strange thing to say since few have great-grandparents until they’re 20, but she’s lived and been such an imposing presence for so long, it always seemed a given that she would live forever. At the other end of the timeline, my six new once-removed first cousins (all younger than 3) personality-wise are all over the map: sweet, neurotic, violent, noisy, self-entertaining. As for my grandparents’ house, the fire in the fireplace is made of cellophane; there’s a new suite/apartment upstairs to house my cousin; 31 people, the number we had Sunday night, can still fit there fairly comfortably; and John Ashcroft looks over it knowingly.

It was, all-in-all, quite a trip. A few of our pictures are online. (Kudos to the person who can find Ashcroft.)

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