I heart the south. I love the southwest, but I heart the south with all my ... well, you know, my heart. I started going there as a young child, mostly to beaches, but also to the Smoky mountains and small towns nestled within. But I don't think I really appreciated the southernness of it all until I went to Nashville about ten years ago. It was then that I became completely and utterly smitten with the charm, with the food, and with what I came to realize was a certain ease of being that is hard to pin down and describe but easy to embrace. They look you in the eye and call you honey, no matter who you are. And they ask how ya'll are and wait for an answer. And they smile.
Then there's the food. Yes, many of the delicious dishes are fried and battered and fried again...and yes, fried food isn't a fantastic habit to have. But they know how to fry stuff in the south! High heat, no oily junk dripping down your chin, and sweet succulent whatever inside of a crispy, tasty outside. Catfish, hushpuppies, oysters, okra...there's probably a fried southern delicacy for every letter of the alphabet. And I'll gladly try them all. Twice.
This time 'round, I travelled south in style, on a train. Somehow, going to the fine southern city of Savannah seemed the perfect opportunity for a nice, long train ride. Being on the train allows a person to breathe, to get their bearings, to make a real transition before arriving in a new place. Air travel is a generally jarring and shocking experience. Sure, it's fast, but do you really want to travel as fast as possible? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? The movement of travel is the beauty of it, so why not enjoy it, take the time to experience it, rather than rush through it with eyes tightly closed and jaw clenched? I know, I know, who has the time to take a train for 14 hours to get somewhere? Why waste a day of your precious vacation time doing that? Well, because it is an experience in and of itself. It's travel as travel should be: dignified, individualized, and comfortable, almost regal. Travel has gotten so common, people so blase about jetting from one place to another, that we forget that it's a big deal to set out from the familiar and venture into the unfamiliar. And we deny that it's okay to make a big deal out of it. In fact, that's part of the whole experience. Or it should be anyway, in the opinion of this traveler.
Savannah has a texture that I am not going to try to describe. Poor people, rich people, slums, historic neighborhoods, trees, flowers, singing birds, gawking tourists, pecans, peaches, seafood, riverboats, Spanish ivy, oyster shell lined sidewalks... an amazingly varied palette of sensory delights. All delivered with a smile. You should go there if you have the opportunity, even if it's just for a few hours.
After Savannah it was on to Moultrie, for my first Farm Show. The Farm Show was kind of like Interbike, except for farm stuff. Well, also except for the fact that I had no idea what most of the stuff was...so it was like Interbike would be to someone who rides a bike but has never tried to figure out how it might work or where the parts might come from or what other parts might be available or what other kinds of bikes are out there...you get the idea. I enjoyed thoroughly looking at large machines and gardening tools and talking to random people about things that are completely foreign to me. And, once again, since it was a farm show in the south, everyone was so darn nice! It didn't matter that I was clearly completely ignorant to what they were talking about (well, except when I was talking about baking with the Mennonites, but that was the exception). I learned a lot.
I picked a twig off a cotton plant and it has the most perfect three cotton puffs you can imagine. I plan to plant it in my garden and see if it grows. Not because you can actually generate enough cotton from one plant to make anything, but as a reminder of all the stuff there is out there to learn and explore. I'm planting a real seed to remind myself to keep planting the figurative seeds of knowledge in my life...
From Moultrie, it was on to Albany, GA, then a long drive to Atlanta for a characteristically stressed and quick flight to Baltimore, then another couple of hours in the car, then home, to Lancaster. To an empty house. Completely empty - no doggie, no one there to greet me or barge in alongside me to see if the kitchen was in one piece. I am not quite sure what other kind of empty there is besides completely empty, but I feel the need to modify the word to emphasize the emptiness. The outside of the house was intact; the inside was tidy. The mums were kind of alive (it must have rained). The basement hadn't imploded. There were a couple of dishes in the sink. The jeep was still there, no sign of attempted intrusion. So, all was well, but it sure was quiet and still. Kind of melancholy.
I set about getting unpacked and putting in laundry and doing dishes and putting the leftovers that I had left myself on the oven and getting all the toiletries back into their homes in the bathroom and putting away the remnants of a pre-trip flurry of mind changes that resulted in random things on the bed. In short, I filled the first hours of my time back with so much activity that I barely had time to feel melancholy about the emptiness. And yes, you read that right, there were leftovers waiting for me. There was also ready-to-bake cookie dough from a batch I made before the trip. I had a feeling I'd need the comforts of home when I got home, and it doesn't get much more comforting than leftover meatloaf and fresh baked cookies. Kind of like someone had left me some goodies because they knew I'd need them. Doesn't matter that I left them for myself. Just matters that they were there. And those leftovers, combined with all the little tasks of getting settled, made it all feel like home. Except for the empty part. My leftovers didn't quite fill all of that.
Now, it is important to say here that I used to love coming home to and being in an empty house. The word empty meant peaceful, quiet, still, clean, private, and normal. Empty was not a bad thing; it in no way denoted that anything was missing. It simply meant I was coming back to my own space, as I had always done, on my own.
Over time, the elated feeling that came along with opening the door to a tidy, empty house has given way to this slightly bothersome melancholy. Bothersome in that I do not know when exactly or why precisely the tides changed. But they have. The entryway looms too quiet without the wiggly dog who sheds hair everywhere and pouts a lot. The kitchen looks weird without half-finished garden projects hidden amidst piles of papers on the table. The bedroom feels positively huge without to-be-organized stacks hanging about, some on dressers, some on the floor, in various staging areas and states of disarray.
So, I with my leftovers, and my glass of wine, mulling it over, have concluded that a Home is a lot of things, not just the house and the routines. And coming home is another thing entirely when you have a real Home. It's not so easy sometimes; it's sad when some of the pieces of Home don't come back at the same time you do. But it's a broadening experience all the same, and I certainly gain some perspective with every departure and every return. I would not change a thing, really.
There is no place like Home, as someone once said, when you're lucky enough to have one.
And that is all the more reason to be free to travel and learn the world and have new experiences.
The homecoming will always be that much sweeter, even in its somewhat bothersome melancholy. Just be sure and leave yourself some leftovers for when you get back, because no matter how good the food might be in the south, or anywhere else, there's no place like Home.
~AC
Then there's the food. Yes, many of the delicious dishes are fried and battered and fried again...and yes, fried food isn't a fantastic habit to have. But they know how to fry stuff in the south! High heat, no oily junk dripping down your chin, and sweet succulent whatever inside of a crispy, tasty outside. Catfish, hushpuppies, oysters, okra...there's probably a fried southern delicacy for every letter of the alphabet. And I'll gladly try them all. Twice.
This time 'round, I travelled south in style, on a train. Somehow, going to the fine southern city of Savannah seemed the perfect opportunity for a nice, long train ride. Being on the train allows a person to breathe, to get their bearings, to make a real transition before arriving in a new place. Air travel is a generally jarring and shocking experience. Sure, it's fast, but do you really want to travel as fast as possible? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? The movement of travel is the beauty of it, so why not enjoy it, take the time to experience it, rather than rush through it with eyes tightly closed and jaw clenched? I know, I know, who has the time to take a train for 14 hours to get somewhere? Why waste a day of your precious vacation time doing that? Well, because it is an experience in and of itself. It's travel as travel should be: dignified, individualized, and comfortable, almost regal. Travel has gotten so common, people so blase about jetting from one place to another, that we forget that it's a big deal to set out from the familiar and venture into the unfamiliar. And we deny that it's okay to make a big deal out of it. In fact, that's part of the whole experience. Or it should be anyway, in the opinion of this traveler.
Savannah has a texture that I am not going to try to describe. Poor people, rich people, slums, historic neighborhoods, trees, flowers, singing birds, gawking tourists, pecans, peaches, seafood, riverboats, Spanish ivy, oyster shell lined sidewalks... an amazingly varied palette of sensory delights. All delivered with a smile. You should go there if you have the opportunity, even if it's just for a few hours.
After Savannah it was on to Moultrie, for my first Farm Show. The Farm Show was kind of like Interbike, except for farm stuff. Well, also except for the fact that I had no idea what most of the stuff was...so it was like Interbike would be to someone who rides a bike but has never tried to figure out how it might work or where the parts might come from or what other parts might be available or what other kinds of bikes are out there...you get the idea. I enjoyed thoroughly looking at large machines and gardening tools and talking to random people about things that are completely foreign to me. And, once again, since it was a farm show in the south, everyone was so darn nice! It didn't matter that I was clearly completely ignorant to what they were talking about (well, except when I was talking about baking with the Mennonites, but that was the exception). I learned a lot.
I picked a twig off a cotton plant and it has the most perfect three cotton puffs you can imagine. I plan to plant it in my garden and see if it grows. Not because you can actually generate enough cotton from one plant to make anything, but as a reminder of all the stuff there is out there to learn and explore. I'm planting a real seed to remind myself to keep planting the figurative seeds of knowledge in my life...
From Moultrie, it was on to Albany, GA, then a long drive to Atlanta for a characteristically stressed and quick flight to Baltimore, then another couple of hours in the car, then home, to Lancaster. To an empty house. Completely empty - no doggie, no one there to greet me or barge in alongside me to see if the kitchen was in one piece. I am not quite sure what other kind of empty there is besides completely empty, but I feel the need to modify the word to emphasize the emptiness. The outside of the house was intact; the inside was tidy. The mums were kind of alive (it must have rained). The basement hadn't imploded. There were a couple of dishes in the sink. The jeep was still there, no sign of attempted intrusion. So, all was well, but it sure was quiet and still. Kind of melancholy.
I set about getting unpacked and putting in laundry and doing dishes and putting the leftovers that I had left myself on the oven and getting all the toiletries back into their homes in the bathroom and putting away the remnants of a pre-trip flurry of mind changes that resulted in random things on the bed. In short, I filled the first hours of my time back with so much activity that I barely had time to feel melancholy about the emptiness. And yes, you read that right, there were leftovers waiting for me. There was also ready-to-bake cookie dough from a batch I made before the trip. I had a feeling I'd need the comforts of home when I got home, and it doesn't get much more comforting than leftover meatloaf and fresh baked cookies. Kind of like someone had left me some goodies because they knew I'd need them. Doesn't matter that I left them for myself. Just matters that they were there. And those leftovers, combined with all the little tasks of getting settled, made it all feel like home. Except for the empty part. My leftovers didn't quite fill all of that.
Now, it is important to say here that I used to love coming home to and being in an empty house. The word empty meant peaceful, quiet, still, clean, private, and normal. Empty was not a bad thing; it in no way denoted that anything was missing. It simply meant I was coming back to my own space, as I had always done, on my own.
Over time, the elated feeling that came along with opening the door to a tidy, empty house has given way to this slightly bothersome melancholy. Bothersome in that I do not know when exactly or why precisely the tides changed. But they have. The entryway looms too quiet without the wiggly dog who sheds hair everywhere and pouts a lot. The kitchen looks weird without half-finished garden projects hidden amidst piles of papers on the table. The bedroom feels positively huge without to-be-organized stacks hanging about, some on dressers, some on the floor, in various staging areas and states of disarray.
So, I with my leftovers, and my glass of wine, mulling it over, have concluded that a Home is a lot of things, not just the house and the routines. And coming home is another thing entirely when you have a real Home. It's not so easy sometimes; it's sad when some of the pieces of Home don't come back at the same time you do. But it's a broadening experience all the same, and I certainly gain some perspective with every departure and every return. I would not change a thing, really.
There is no place like Home, as someone once said, when you're lucky enough to have one.
And that is all the more reason to be free to travel and learn the world and have new experiences.
The homecoming will always be that much sweeter, even in its somewhat bothersome melancholy. Just be sure and leave yourself some leftovers for when you get back, because no matter how good the food might be in the south, or anywhere else, there's no place like Home.
~AC
