Significant Incongruities

can't help feeling a pang for the childhood security those factories represented -the unshakable sureness tliat Dad was always at Armco, and Armco would always be there. Armco is A-K Steel now, and Ashland Oil is moving its headquarters to Findlay, Ohio, following a merger. That is reality. And I have learned that dependence on any large organization for a paycheck or an identity could leave you without eitiier one. I have found that it works out best when you can generate your own paycheck and that your identity comes from inside, not outside. That, too, is reality. But I also know that my identity is tied up in hills and smokestacks and dinner at five p.m. That my soul Uves in a place where bridges make connections. My internal landscape is a river valley, not flat farmland under a wide, blue sky. As the physical landscape of my childhood diminishes, I am surprised to find it living—larger than life—inside ofme. And it always will be part of my reality. Significant Incongruities Tell me the story of a Uzard in a glove, ofpornography in the possession of a holy man. Tell me stories of geography lessons in the sand, of sooty-faced girls waving at trains in wartime, of one who broods about her father's cast stones. Tell me stories of homecomings in the desert, of sweet homemade wine, ofwoods spiders living their living unknowing of my own. Tell me to listen to the rhythm of the snow, to the silence oflaughter, to the magma roiling hot and unseen beneath my path. Rock me to sleep with the fables of our living, and I will hear the rain before it falls. —Rebecca Bailey 39 ...