Eucalyptus Pillow: Where I'm From

Last week was apparently the week everyone wanted to know something about me. So what did I do? Run and hide. Between facebook and this blog, I was tagged to write 25 random things, facts, goals about me, answer 45 questions about me, take an interview that seemed to go on and on, complete a “bucket list”, and write a poem about me.

I am so sick of me.

While I've been successfully caving under such pressure by being "offline" for a week now, I do have to say that this task is at least a little creatively challenging. Much more interesting than someone knowing my favorite food is french fries.

Heather tagged me to share “Where I’m From”. A poem started here, and posted by Binky here. Since this week’s trend is self-reflection, here goes on completing one more of these “me” tasks.

WHERE I’M FROM

I am from underneath the downy loveliness of the blanket on my bed, from my Pentax SLR camera and old Polaroid stills.

I am from an old colonial white home with the orange door and 2 bay windows, near the corner of a busy street from where everyone would honk to say hello.

I am from the lilac bush, the honeysuckle and the forsythia of my childhood backyard.

I am from the loud and loquacious Cooper clan, the Minears I never knew, and the generations of Czechoslovakian, English and Dutch ancestors before me.

I am from a generation of fighters and lovers, lazy workers and hard workers, artists and engineers; a multiplicity of oxymorons.

I am from underachieving, careless, talented, and MVP.

I am from the Roman Catholic church that spawned many a guilty conscience.

I’m from the Jersey shore, the countryside of Southeastern Ohio, and homemade ketchup and jelly.

From an overbearing immigrant, from cold Ohio mornings when urine in the bucket inside the house would freeze, from a radio always on in the kitchen with my mother singing and the sweet smell of pipe smoke wafting up from the basement.

I am from streaks of ink across a drafting table, from warm bread in the back of a truck, from the tattered, faded remnants and sepia-toned photographs found in trunks and old diaries absorbing the odor of time moving forward. I am from a place I would gladly return.