I was feeling really homesick yesterday. I almost cried looking through old pictures, and that says a bit because I don’t cry very often.
I love where I am, I do want to start by saying that. My home is here because the loves of my life are here. I love our home. I would keep this home even if we won the lottery, just because I feel a connection to it. These walls whisper beautiful stories of the love here– the babies who learned to crawl and babble, the boy who went from child to mancub, the husband that spilled sweat and blood into remodeling. I don’t ever want to leave, this home or Colorado, and I’m quite happy to imagine myself living here forever. I’m humble. I don’t need more.
But when I look through old pictures, I remember.
I talked to my sister-in-law recently who was also a Southern Belle and moved here not exactly understanding the depth of what leaving there meant. She doesn’t want to move back. Neither do I. What I mourn is that I can’t leave and go back to that and yet keep what I have made here, and by that I don’t mean the material things we’ve acquired. It would never be the same. Seven years and 2000 miles have changed everything.
And that makes me sad and happy, because life has been beautiful these 7 years yet I’m homesick and longing all at the same time.
I talk to Jeremy about it ALL.THE.TIME. He’s so sweet and understanding, but I don’t think he really does understand. His family is all here. Everyone that he had a connection to as a child are within an hour’s drive. He thinks it’s silly that I miss family that never cared then, thusly making it so easy to go. But I was 24! I wasn’t in the healing/depthful/thoughtful state of mind then. My indifference to my family had as much to do with me as them. I just wanted to go. If I could go back to the 24-year-old me and whisper a secret into my own ear that would change my choice, would I? No. I’m here because this is where I was lead. And I simply have faith that one day this place will grow on me, or that I’ll better understand why I’m here.
When we moved here, I didn’t care about leaving behind my folks, my kin, my family. But now I look at old pictures of those faces I loved, and I mourn not being closer to them to heal and try again. I’d love to jump in my car and drive a few hours to see my Grandaddy and MeMe, my dad, my grandmother, my sister, my niece, my cousins. I wish they could know me as an adult, and I wish I could know the changes they too have made.
I want to be able to visit once a year. I need to have a connection to that place. I think that would help this feeling. Seems easy enough a goal, but it just isn’t so simple. There are many obstacles. So I send prayers upward.
My grandpa sent me these pictures from my mom & dad’s wedding in 1974 last year. It was so spontaneous and thoughtful that I cried when I opened the package with these pictures within it. It’s the little things, isn’t it?
Left to right: Dad, Mom, Aunt Donna, MeMe, and Grandaddy, 1974. Do you see that twinkle in my dad’s eye? That’s me. :-) I came 2 years later to join the family.
Wasn’t my Momma a dollbaby? She had dimples and personality that would make you love her.
And here’s a picture from May, when I went home to visit. I had to order the picture from the photographer, so I didn’t have it until recently. There’s so much history here…
Top left to right: Dad, me, my stepbrother, Sean.
Bottom left to right: My stepmother, Kim, and my sister-in-law, Michelle.
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Ok. Enough. Now I want to cry again. I’m off now to put the day to rest. I’m an emotional soul at times.
We went camping for the first time in two years last weekend and had a blast of a time. We went with our friends Amy and Steve, who have kiddos that are Bella and Noah’s age.
We set up camp in the lovely spot next to the lake. We brought the weed whacker to help clear a nice spot for us. This was also the place we went camping at a few years ago and there was a rattler just feet from our tent. So I thought that clearing a spot was the smart thing to do so we could watch where we were treading.
We got all set up– shade tents, bbq grill, tent city, etc. The kids were having a great time. But the Park Rangers came around and told us we had to move because we were camping in a prohibited area and we were breaking the rules by even stepping on the grass. Good thing she wasn’t there to see us when we were weed whacking it down. Oops.
So we had to move but there were no camping spots left except at an RV park, which totally defeats the purpose of camping, don’t ya think? We went anyways and made the best of it. There were older folks there, so we were the youngsters. Everyone was quiet and in bed by 9 pm! We surely weren’t. We sang by the fire, chased the kids around until they finally zonked (which was after 10, as they were all wired up on marshmallows), and then broke out the drinks and adult laughs. I haven’t gotten tipsy in a long time, but I sure did that night. I was all giggly and stupid, but feeling youthful and funloving! We had a steep hill right by our campsite and we all rolled down the hill, did sommersaults, made silly dares. Amy dared me and Jeremy to roll down the hill together and when we did, I knocked my head into a rock really hard! I knew if I weren’t tipsy that it would have been super painful but I just jumped right up like nothing happened and went for another roll. The next morning I woke with sticks and twigs all tangled in my hair, red wine splattered all over my white shirt, and the worst headache ever. I don’t know if it was from the wine or the concussion I probably gave myself by hitting my head on that rock. What goof-balls! Amy and I went for a walk once we got up to go brush our teeth in the restroom and went past the hill we had so much fun playing on the night before. She said, “Steph, do you remember how big that hill looked last night?” It was microscopic with sober eyes! I couldn’t believe how we had acted like we were brave cliffhangers, doing our drunken acrobatics on this wee, tiny little hill. I guess this is what happens when you don’t get out of the house much!
The kids made quick work of our tent. I slept with toys as pillows, hotdog pieces and marshmallows stuck to my cheeks and hair, and crumbs from goodness knows what in my sheets. But I slept sooooo good with all my kiddos curled under the comforter like little pigs in a blanket. They snuggled and nuzzled warmly all night, hiding from mosquitos and the desert cold.
Here’s Bella and Maggie coming down from their smores high…
Steve played us some Oh Brother Where Art Thou folk music on his guitar. Made me close my eyes and remember how wonderful the South sounds…
I can also close my eyes and thank God for Colorado, no matter how homesick I get. This is a beautiful and amazing place to call home, and goodness knows we’re havin’ fun!
Cupcake recently asked in a comment how we ended up in Colorado. I get that question so often from folks around here, and I don’t think I’ve ever shared that story on my blog. So, I thought I’d tell the tale…
I heard a song on the radio recently that had an interesting chorus. I wish I knew who sang it so that I could give credit, but I never got the Artist’s name. “Make sure that if you run, you are running to something and not away from. Problems don’t need an airplane to find you.” I don’t know how that applies to me, but for some reason it stuck and I think about it a lot.
I had lost most contact with my family in NC around the time Austin was born. I don’t blame them completely, I certainly played a role in that. I didn’t try very hard to be a part of it after it went awry. My grandmother and dad took turns raising me after my mom passed away. I knew I was always a burden to one or the other, they didn’t mince words and let me know all the time. So I spent my last months of high school sleeping in may car or at a friend’s house, or when I had the money, in a hotel. The last year of high school was lonely for me. Financially I was ok since I started getting a Social Security check when I turned 18 for my mother’s death. That check quit coming once I graduated. I got pregnant during the summer after high school graduation. My grandmother was pretty excited about hiding my pregnancy from her Christian friends– I wasn’t married, was pregnant, and with an bi-racial child, no less. So she sent me to a maternity home in Asheville. I think she thought I’d give Austin up for adoption and move back to Fayetteville like nothing ever happened. I instead made a life with my new baby there, just the two of us.
I met Jeremy when Austin was nearly 2 and I was nearly 21. I knew Jeremy always wanted to move back to Colorado, as he grew up here and had fond memories. When we married, we thought it would be nice to make a new beginning here together. That’s the move in a nutshell.
But, there were other factors. Jeremy’s mother wanted to move back here too, so she encouraged us. Sometimes pushing us. She had tried to move here alone and ended up going back to NC because she missed her sons and grandsons. She made this huge plan once she got back to get us ALL to move to CO together– one big, happy family. So we moved to CO in January 2000, the rest of the fam moved here by June. The interesting part? Now none of them speak to one another and haven’t for years. So they live a handful of miles away and never see Jeremy. Go figure.
We also were really getting burnt out on the racism in NC. It was intense and so ‘in your face’. Most people don’t understand that. Most people think that because an area is diverse, because there are tons of mixed marriages, or because they have never witnessed blatant racism, that it must not exist. But it does. Jeremy’s brother is married to a black woman and they had an easier time with racism than we did– me being white and married to a black man. The white men were hateful to Jeremy because they felt threatened. The black women hated me because they felt threatened. Sometimes we would walk into a restaurant in the outskirts of town and silence would fall, every head would turn. We learned there were place where we just couldn’t go. I would get nasty and sometimes threatening notes on my car at store parking lots, I would have co-workers quit talking to me once I displayed pictures of my family on my desk. I once had a friend “comfort” me through one of my miscarriages by telling me that maybe I should “stick to my own kind” and then God will bless me with a successful pregnancy. Sometimes it was blatant, sometimes people were more gentle about it. I once had an old man walk up to me at a pool hall while I was ordering drinks and say, “What’s a beautiful girl like you doing with a Nigger?” There were KKK rallies through Asheville streets annually where the men wore their hooded garb and rode horses. They were escorted by police. People would give them an audience because it was interesting that, after all these years, there were people out there that still felt so strongly about hating a race, any race, other than their own. The nastiness we saw as a family was so frequent that we wanted to run away. And there was so little at that point that made me want to stay. Jeremy never felt a connection to NC. I did, but didn’t really comprehend it until recent years. So, here we are.
Since we’ve lived in CO, we have not had a single incident with racism. Not one. The only awkward situation we had was when a teacher of Austin’s in 5th grade was teaching African American history. She kept using the word “Nigger” in class. (And you can imagine how cool all the kids thought they were using that word on the ONLY child of color in the class: Austin) We went and talked to her about it, trying to figure out why she couldn’t use another word to describe a black slave. She apologized. She told us she grasped the depth of what she was doing. She told us she didn’t want to lose her job over it. We asked her to just use another word and I offered her some of my African American Literature books so that she could become more educated and sensitive to the strength of this word. We asked her to apologize to Austin, to talk to the class about how it is innapropriate to use, etc. She never did. But that’s the only time we’ve had any racial type issues since we’ve lived here. So I guess, for that reason, our move was a wise one.
I do grow increasingly homesick. Maybe we just always want the greener grass over yonder. It wouldn’t be easy to move at this point– A house, several cars, kids, dogs, roots… So, we’ll bloom where we’ve been planted. Jeremy always tells me he’d move back if I really wanted to. And I do really want to. But I don’t want to be responsible for uprooting everyone and moving across the country again. I was more adventurous in 2000, when we moved here. Now I make all of my decisions based on what’s safe, what’s fair to everyone, what’s unselfish.
Boy, I didn’t think this would be so long. Hey! You’re snoring! Stop it!
Anyways, that’s the story. Thanks for listening! I think it helps my homesickness to talk about home from time to time. Maybe I’ll post some good memories and old pictures one of these days! Maybe I’ll even have to start a new category for this kind of stuff: “Southern Belle”.
