That’s what we’ve always called them – pots. I guess florists and greenhouses refer to Memorial Day flowers by some other name, although it escapes me at this time. Mother’s pot, Daddy’s pot, Grandpa Shimp’s pot and Grandma Shimp’s and Auntie’s.

I think calling them pots is related to getting the actual container, sticking your fingers in the dirt and putting in geraniums and spikes and some sort off ivy or fern go together. Pots and black soil . . . and doing it because your heart asks you too. I don’t think of the dead people lying beneath the stones; I see in my mind those people doing the potting thing in years past and me following along, helping (or getting in the way). I even remember the sensory aspects of the times we did it – the nearness of Grandma’s starched and ironed house dress, the coarseness of the dirt on the work table’s surface, the smell of geraniums, the heat of the sun as we toted pots from car to grave, the silence as we stepped back and looked at the flowers by the gravestones.

Now if this were tomorrow at this time, I should be in the drivers seat heading out to Fountain County – meeting my cousins in Attica. Every time I think of Attica, I see Gregory Peck in my mind. Atticus Finch, don’tcha know. I don’t know what I saw before I read To Kill a Mockingbird – all I remember is my dad asking if I wanted to go through Attica or not on the way to Kingman. And then, of course, he always asked about Yeddo. It was an ongoing joke which began before I can remember. I suppose the name was funny when I was little. He’s dead now; in fact, it’s his grave to which I am going on Thursday. However, his voice and that question pop into my mind whenever I see the Yeddo sign.

Maybe when I die, my last word will be Yeddo, but I doubt it. I don’t think I have the same fondness for Yeddo as Kane had for Rosebud.

I’d like to take a lot of pictures of my way down, but I will be in the car alone. I need someone along to document the route across Indiana that I take on Memorial Day Week-end . . . because it is pastoral and because I usually get lost, despite GPS. I should have an album of AmeliaJake Lost Places. Actually, I am usually not truly lost; I am mostly a little lost. That is probably worse because I think, “Oh, surely I can figure this out.” That isn’t so bad most of the time, but when I get down in the area where east and west roads lead to the floodplain of the Wabash River, I can do a lot of backtracking.

Better save my strength for tomorrow.