What Nebraska Means to Me

 I sit thinking about what Nebraska means to me. Does the meaning come from being at the cabin and watching a deep red cardinal sit on the rail today, the prettiest bird I've ever seen? Is it the tress and water that surround me in all their hidden serenity? Or could it be the woman who helped me carry my purchases out of the store, because I looked tired and was spacey? Was it finding an Anne Tyler book in at Good Will, where I also found a first printing of Willa Cather's  "Oh Pioneers" 1940 paperback and a magazine on Nebraska Birds? Maybe it's my granddaughters here in Crete or the Pony Express Park and Methodist Church where our other home is. Some questions are hard put, but from the time when I was two and flew in my father's plane, until I was eight and found  jewelry in the knoll at the family dump and went down town and sold it, I loved Nebraska. It didn't stop there and it won't stop here. This is where I will one day be buried, my ashes scattered to the winds  on the plains. What Nebraska means, to me, and why I love it will remain a mystery-like secrets in the breeze and owls hiding in trees...