The movie channels must have been channeling my subconscious this weekend as they were continuously running Steel Magnolias and Sweet Home Alabama...two of my all time faves. Throw in Bull Durham and you would have had the tri-fecta of my version of comfort food-movies about the small towns of the South and the sense of history and belonging that come with them.
I'm a CA girl by birth but a Southern girl by upbringing and choice and love that my sun kissed skin comes with a bit of a country twang. Catch me with a Jack & Diet and the bit turns into a full blown drawl... While I won't pretend to overlook the time in our history when flying the Southern Cross meant much worse things than a love of family, tradition and seafood, I do relish the time I spent there, and unfortunately, have spent much of my life searching for the sense of security that I found in a town with no stop light.
My parents divorced when I was 11 and my mother, who, at the time, I thought had completely lost her mind, moved us as far away, legally, as she could from my father and the Washington, DC life he represented. Family would visit and swear that while it wasn't the end of the Earth, they could certainly see it from our backyard. Looking back now, I still don't agree with the decision to move us from my father but I understand her desire to get a fresh start away from the pain of a failed dream. And, where she chose to move has given me the only place I really do still call home...even though I left there over 25 years ago.
What is it about a town who got its first fast food restaurant within the past decade that makes you feel complete? Is it the fact there are no strangers, not ever? Is it the knowledge that everyone, will always have your back? Is it the calmness of watching fireflies light up the night sky over the water? Or is it knowing that the same Jimmy Joe who filled up your gas tank at lunch is the firefighter who will fish out Gregory Jones truck when he takes that turn just a little too fast around your pond? It is all of it! The history, the slowness of time, the roar of the crowd at a high school football game on a Friday night all blend together into an amazing sense of peace.
Believe me, it wasn't always peaceful growing up there...Gregory Jones did drive his truck right into our pond in the middle of a Sunday barbecue on the same day my mother about had a coronary after she caught me climbing in through the window of my friend's carbon copy of the General Lee...c'mon, any Dukes of Hazzard fan knows the doors don't open on those cars! My brother set the forest on fire one time and was told by the volunteer fireman that "Son, next time just try to aim those flares just a lil' bit higher o'er the water...." And, my mother, who had invited some No. Va friends down for the weekend was kicked out of the nicest restaurant in town for dancing to the band ...dancing wasn't allowed downtown....
But, as I mentioned, it is what has made me, well, me. As Miranda Lambert writes in one of new favorite songs..."It is the house that built me..." It is the home of many of my firsts...my first kiss... my first best friend...my first taste of alcohol (although it took me years to EVER drink peach schnapps again)...first time shooting a gun and let me tell you, I was good...my first heartbreak...And, probably most of all, my first vision of what I wanted my life to be. I wanted the house on the island, with the high school football star, the boat, the 2 kids and a dog and the knowledge that I would never be alone.
Obviously times change and my mother chose yet again to move us...this time away from the quiet and peace of life on the water and I lost that sense of home. Friday nights no longer meant football and cruising to the Tastee Freeze. I lost the ability to read brake lights...believe me, I was quite bilingual! And, I lost a good part of me. I would recapture it here and there over the years...going to college in the Appalachian mountains would bring back a piece as would my occasional visits to the Chesapeake Bay. But, I never really was able to recreate it and now over 2 decades later, know that is what I have been searching for.
People may laugh and mock the ability to stop the sense of time (and I definitely missed the Starbucks on every corner during my last visit) but, if the rest of the country could actually take just a bit of the respect, the tradition and the love of home and country which we find in the heart of the South, we may actually be a stronger, happier place. I know I loved that my children, had for a very brief moment, the use of "Sir and Ma'am" in their vocabulary after our visit. And, I know, somewhere in my future, is a house, on the water, with a name that says...2nd Chance Farm...where I will share with my children and grandchildren how to put away their cell phones and still know that you are to meet Jay and Johnny Lee at the Tastee Freeze because they hit their brakes 3 times....
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