To Build a Home

[FRANCESCA]
There's a boat that leaves from Napoli
Every Thursday in the morning
And a nervous bride can share a bed
With her soldier from the States
For a week, the ocean carries them
Over lost and churning water
And they land in New York Harbor
Then to Pennsylvania Station
Where they board a train
That slices like a scythe
Through the fields of America

This is Albany
This is Buffalo
This is Cleveland
This is South Bend
This is Chicago
This is Osceola Station
Where a truck will take them
Deeper into Iowa
To Winterset
And three hundred acres
Waiting to be tamed

And blade of grass by blade of grass
And ear of corn by ear of corn
And bale of hay by day by day
They build themselves a home
And day by day and year by year
From boy to man, from calf to steer
What's lost from there may not grow here
But comes the sun
Look what they've done:
They've built themselves a home

[Years begin passing, from 1948 to 1950 to 1951. If this were a realistic set, a farmhouse would appear.]

At twenty-one, a girl begins
To grasp the world and how it spins
She grabs a box of safety pins
And builds herself a home
And home is safe, and home is fair
The porch, the bath, the kitchen chair
The sharp and unfamiliar air
That blow by blow
She comes to know
To build herself a home

[It is now 1965. Her husband BUD, 45, her son MICHAEL, 16, and her daughter CAROLYN, 14, come onstage. FRANCESCA is 38 now.]

With a son
And a daughter
And a million miles between
The fires she used to set
The hearts she used to break
The lies she used to tell
And the woman she grew up
To be

[COMPANY]
Aaah…
Aaah…
Aaah…
Aaah…
Aaah…
Aaah…

[FRANCESCA]
I learn to speak, I learn to sew
I learn to let the longing go
The tractor wheel, a foot of snow
I build myself a home

I change my words, I change my name
The fields go dry, the horse goes lame
The county fair, the football game
For eighteen years
It stays the same
For eighteen years
I'm proud I came
And built myself a home

[COMPANY]
Aaah…
Aaah…
Aaah!