I grew up in Indiana, where we slept with the windows open to the fragrant night air. When twilight fell and the night breeze blew through the screen I remember the scent of growing corn. Like the scent of water, you never forget the smell. I woke in the summer mornings surrounded by the mellowness inside our house. Outside we played hide and seek among the neatly spaced rows, racing one another to our "safe" base. The corn and I grew up together. Every summer we stretched ourselves to the bluest skies. We basked in the Indiana sun and bent into the wind caught out in a thunderstorm. The summer seemed endless for us both. We grew and changed with nature's bounty unaware of our changes. When the end of summer drew near we had outgrown our earlier forms. I had to have new shoes and longer dresses to hide my skinned knees. School began another year. We no longer played in the cornfields. We left them tired and browning in the sun. Harvest came and the stalks rustled deeply in the cooling wind. It was a lonely sound coming through the window screen now. Soon the cornstalks were gone and the fields left barren until planting in the spring. Another endless summer was approaching.
