Friday night in Chicago I decided I wasn't up for more touristy events so I just did some shopping, went to Borders and bought a couple of books, picked up dinner and took a bubble bath and spent a nice, relaxing evening in the hotel. I started a book that night and finished it the next day on the plane....it's "Homesick" by Sela Ward. The book goes through her life growing up in Mississippi and the craving for some of those things throughout her life. Being from Arkansas, it had me smiling a lot, as well as bringing up a lot of memories of a me that seems so completely different than the person I am today. It was touching enough that I wanted to spend some time thinking/writing about it. First, some of my dog-eared quotes are:
"So many of us have moved away from the modest place that was too small to hold our dreams, too quiet for the noise we were born to make. Yet for all the success we may have found in the big city (or sprawling suburb), we are discovering there is a cost. We have strayed too far from the humble things that endure and given short shrift to the rituals and traditions that give meaning and continuity to our lives."
"I yearn for a string of lazy afternoons on the front porch of our farm cottage, a glass of sweet tea in my hand, with nothing to do but watch the dragonflies light on the nickle-silver surface of the pond, loll in the humid, earthy air, and let it draw the sweat to the surface of my skin.......to hear the soft cadences of Southern voices, to taste my native-born accent in my mouth again, and to have the waitress at the Waffle House ask me if I want grits with that, honey."
"I'd spend my life worrying over the things I'd never had the chance to do, because they weren't available in a small Southern town......I might come back someday, but if and when I did I would bring with me some knowledge of the outside world, some knowledge of myself and what I was capable of."
"Maybe the price we pay for moving on in life is this very nostalgic, bittersweet awareness of what we've left behind. What I've come to realize is that I must work to weave the past and the present into a secure fabric for my future."
Okay, there were more than that, but I picked those as my top ones. The ones that really touched me and made me remember summers at my grandmother's where my brothers, cousins and I built a cleaned out spot to be our "secret" place. Where I slipped on wet rocks walking through a creek. Where I laid belly-down on a little bridge with a coffee can in my hand to catch the craw-deads and frogs that were swimming below. Where I played many a game of UNO. Where I ran bare-footed on a hot, dirt road the mile down the road to buy 5 pieces of 3-cent candy with the 15-cents my grandma gave me. Where I fed chickens and pigs and goats. Where I spent many an afternoon swinging on the porch swing as high as it would go singing as loudly as I could.
What happened to that little, country girl? How'd she find herself 16-hours away and being all "businessy" and such? How did I get from having to announce that I had "free lunch" to doing quite well for myself? I met some folks from California while I was in Chicago and they said they didn't hear a southern accent at all. I love southern accents...what happened to mine?
If/when I have kids one day I want them to know about the culture/environment I grew up with. I never want to forget or let go of that part of me. The "baby girl" of the family. The love. The fights. The imagination. The sweet tea.
10:01:54 PM 
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