Ten years later, we finally made it out of the corn maze successfully.
I haven’t been filing these weekly dispatches about family life from a field in rural Putnam County over the course of those 3,641 days. Ours has been a different kind of “lost in the field.”
If you’ve never been through Suter’s corn maze near Pandora, here are the basics. The cornstalks are usually taller than you, so you can’t really see through. There’s a path cut through in various shapes that look cool from an aerial photo or on a map, but they’re maddening when you run into the dead ends by foot. There are clues posted on signs throughout the maze, which you’re supposed to write on a card the workers give you.
Most importantly, especially if you have kids, there are colorful stamps hidden throughout, usually matching up with the theme from that part of the maze. Finding these stamps is the source and summit of the joy of a corn maze. There are even special extra “hidden” stamps. If you find all the stamps, you’re a winner. If you don’t, you’re a chump who can’t even find all the stamps in a corn maze.
I don’t really understand the appeal of a corn maze. I was legitimately lost in the middle of a cornfield when I was a child, playing hide-and-seek with a friend on his family’s farm. When you get far enough out into a sea of stalks, you lose your sense of direction. You get turned around and can’t remember which way you need to go. Your mind goes weird places. When I was lost, I wondered if Linus from “Peanuts” was right about the Great Pumpkin, only he was waiting in the wrong place, because the Great Pumpkin hid in a cornfield and was actually quite evil. But I digress.
Despite that experience, it’s a family tradition. My now-wife and I had our second date at Suter’s, when we brought her 4-year-old daughter along. We saw our potential to become a family that afternoon.
Every year since, we’ve returned. Our crew got bigger after we married and added more two children.
That didn’t mean we successfully completed that maze, though. Young children usually meant having to quit the maze halfway through when someone got crabby (usually me). One year, our diabetic daughter’s blood sugar got too low, so my wife abandoned the path and marched her right through the corn to find sugar to bring her numbers up. Every year, someone needs carried for large chunks of the course, because they’re not used to wandering for miles in a field.
Last Sunday afternoon, we were determined. We each had a role to play in our success.
My wife was the navigator, weaving us through the maze with her trusty map. I carried the cards for the whole crew, making sure our group stood together. Our 7- and 8-year-old daughters were the exploratory team, running up and down little paths, looking for stamps and clues.
Our 14-year-old daughter had the most important job: She listened for other people’s celebrations when they found stamps. Each time she heard one, she acted like a faithful hunting dog, pointing us in the direction of our treasure.
With minimal in-fighting, we tore through that course. Sure, we went over some parts of the course more than once, going back to find things we must’ve missed. But everyone walked the course. Everyone helped us find each stamp. And each of us came out smiling from the shared experience.
I know this annual tradition has a limited life span. Our eldest is a teen now, and you don’t see many teens on the course walking around with their parents. Our younger children won’t stay younger forever either.
Someday soon, they’ll want to try the maze on their own. Before I know it, they’ll probably be walking their own children through a similar course.
We didn’t end a streak of 10 failed trips through the maze last week; we improved on 10 years of memories. I’ll have to hold onto these fond memories, hoping that this fun we’ve had together means as much to them as it does to me.
.neFileBlock {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding-bottom: 5px;
padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
font-size: 85%;
}
