Roots

I have always been proud of where I come from. Just a small rural town close to northern Ohio Appalachia with big rolling fields and the smell of fresh cut hay, the seasonal whiff of manure. There's always a hum of tractors and talk of big machinery, livestock, and crops.

Town center only has a couple stoplights, a post office, and a handful of mom and pop shops. Everybody knows everybody there. Heck, I'm practically related to half the town!

But if you keep on driving way out past "city limits," the great big road begins to wind and dip and dive, up and down and all around the mounded countryside. The air conditioning in your car will begin to smell like American farmland. You'll pass old barns and electric fences and hundreds of acres of soy and corn. The houses begin to spread out farther and the roads you pass seem sparse.

But around one downward twisting bend, there juts a road named after a man named Sam, and down this road theres a rough, winding gravel passageway that creeps steeply into the valley. Lined with oaks and long, vast pines, the way snakes down between two ponds and curves up to a little ranch house positioned in front of humble hay.

Five generations have lived there. Five; dating all the way to when the family immigrated to America. Five generations of my family. I walk their footsteps, I feel their sentiment, and I dream of the past.

I've always felt a fascinating sense of magic in this land where I grew up. A sense that leaves me in wonder when I hike the rolling hills of my backyard or canoe in the ponds out front. I reminisce the stories of my big Italian-Austrian family that my dad passed down to me. I picture their faces and how things were different then. I think about the family legacy.

Many people are proud of where they come from. I'm one of them too. My pride comes from hard-working immigrants who built our family farm from the ground up. People who raised cattle and cut crops and worked their fingers to the bone day after day, slaving over Mother Earth to put bread on the table. People who stayed strong in their faith, loved ferociously, and lived by truth, honor, and right action. People who built a legacy from dust in a little town of rolling hills.

I am proud to be the daughter of a farmer. I am proud to live on the family land to this day. I am proud to say I am a resident of Small Town, USA and a product of the countryside. I am proud of my roots.

I am proud to be a Stefanick. I'll keep wearing it every day with pride. And when I go outside to take in the fresh air, listen to the sounds of nature, feel the tall, grassy hay beneath my feet and gawk in awe at the beauty that unfolds in front of my eyes, I feel the magic. I feel the aura of the lives that passed here before me. I feel the weight of their faith rest gently on my shoulders. I feel the vibrations of nature coarse through my veins as oxygen with every breath.

I feel my soul ache, yearning, reaching back into the beginnings of time where my roots were laid on this Earth.