I’ve returned from yet another extended jaunt to the country of my roots. And you know what this means, dear reader. My dialect has taken a turn from sophisticated Southern woman to inbred, uneducated redneck.
(And to think I’ve come so far in pulling off this sophisticated air, especially since this blog is all about sophistication.)
Reader, my regressed dialect makes Sarah Palin sound Harvard educated. I haven’t pronounced the ending ‘g’ sound in DAYS, and I think I even said a handful of double negatives, which, if you know me at all, is one of my biggest nail-on-the-chalkboard pet peeves.
When I left my small, redneck hometown 15 years ago for college, I dreamed of how my return visits would go. I would come back sounding so intelligent, speaking proper English, only with a charming Southern accent. I would discuss ideas bigger than the lack of rain on the peanut crops and how’s yer mama doin’. I would rise above my country roots and be an in-the-flesh personification of the New South.
I would be an enlightened force to be reckoned with at family gatherings!
Well, those dreams went up in a puff of Marlboro Red chain smoke. I revert back to my countrified ways faster than you can say yee-haw.
It must be the lack of concrete and exhaust fumes in my hometown that causes me to regress. When I go back, the fresh air and natural greenery of the country scrambles my brain like an egg fresh from the backyard chicken coop until I forget I ever earned a four year degree.
When my cousin sits down next to me at the table during Thanksgiving dessert with a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in his hand, that right there blows the last bit of my sophisticated brain to hell and back and I can no longer recall things like Ketel One vodka and goat cheese truffles. He brags about the cheapness of the beer and that’s when my eyes roll to the back of my head, I go into convulsions and wake up with amnesia.
The evolved world no longer exists!
But after a few days, I find it still does.
I’m now back in the world of Ketel One and goat cheese. Gone is the singing of crickets and the rustle of blowing leaves, and in its place is the mechanical rumble of traffic and fugly tower views.
Welcome back to suburbia, Heather.
While it’s nice to be back among my own things and recall parts of the evolved world, becoming immersed in my own world again is a slow process for me. My country detoxification always begins with a period of depression.
I look into my backyard and see not acres of trees and forest, but a barren sliver of land that’s been stripped of all traces of the country it used to be. I look across and down the street at the houses that all look exactly like mine and can’t tell you the names of the people in those identical houses.
I watch my boys play on their wooden swingset, our poor suburbanite attempt to replicate a tree fort and rope swing. It falls oh so very short and simply can’t compare to this…
…and my depression deepens.
I feel a loss of something I can’t name. Though if I had to guess, that feeling of loss is probably the lack of oxygen because THERE ARE NO MATURE TREES IN SUBURBIA! What few trees there are are sissified Bradford pears planted for architectural landscape reasons and could never hold a rope swing.
At my mother’s, I watched Parker play with the neighbor’s dog with more than enough room to run. He discovered how to play King of the Mountain on a huge mound of dirt, and that the King’s downfall is sometimes as simple as a dirt clod to the mouth and his usurper is his own cousin.
That’s a type of fun even the Wii can’t duplicate.
I only saw Payton at mealtimes and bedtime because there are acres of nature to explore and he was out doing just that. I stepped out onto the porch and watched him search for perfectly shaped acorns and examine moss growing on the oak trees. I knew in my heart he was in an element that speaks to his soul.
When we returned to our little square of purposeless land, Payton asked if he could have a nature room so he can be in nature all of the time. Then he wanted to know if we can buy some land with a pond on it.
Those words are a hatchet to my roots that allows the depression to sink even deeper. I don’t have it in me to explain to him why we’re stuck on a postage stamp and have no hopes of acres of land with a pond.
It’s going to take a lot of Ketel One and goat cheese truffles to get me through this detox-uh-fa-kay-shun and resign myself to suburban life once again.
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So funny, and yet…The thing about choices in life, is that we always have the road not taken threatening our sanity.
So funny, and yet…The thing about choices in life, is that we always have the road not taken threatening our sanity.
I feel like i always start my comments to your posts with “i know just how you feel” – which sounds so goddam trite (did i even spell that right??) – but i do. I live in a Florida contemporary on a postage stampt – but my family – they’re all in the Blue Ridge. It makes me crazy to be with my family – and yet depressed to leave.
Ann’s Rants said it so perfectly: the possibilities are endless, thus so are the opporunities to drive ourselves crazy with them.
I have a theory that our kids run straight towards whatever we are running away from. I totally want to run away from winter and move to Aruba. I imagine if/when we do so, my kids will turn into ski buffs and long for the snowy mountains.
Beautiful!
Oh, lordy. Or – ooh, laws, as my Grammy used to say. My Dad was born here, in Charlotte, NC, but his family was from Mobile, AL. My mother was from Maine, and basically beat all traces of a Southern accent out of us – “because it makes you look stupid”. Someone should have told her so does beating your kids, but, oh well.
Why are you stuck where you are? How far away is land with trees and a pond? Maybe if you can’t move there, you can find a place and make a point to visit a couple of times a month?
I have a “land gene” that makes me desperately want a little farm or ranch. Acres to explore and a horse to ride.
But this is not my roots (unless you go back to my great-grandfather). I was raised in a place fouled by the steel mills of the north. Nary a redeeming quality.
Nice pictures!! Looks beautiful.
Beautiful pictures and beautiful sentiments. I sort of feel the same sometimes…only I grew up in suburbia. Now I live in a city and I miss the fields and spaces and greenery I grew up with…oh, and I miss the english language too.
My family is the same way. Got to Thanksgiving dinner this year and my great uncle brought a bottle of fruit flavored wine wrapped in Reynolds wrap…no brown paper bag or anything. REYNOLDS WRAP. WTF???
great pics. they captured it very well. it’s a shame kids can’t just run out and play anymore like we used to.
even living in suburbia. seems like these days it’s just “not safe”
i wonder how i’ll feel when littlebean is old enough to do that.
i hope i give her the freedom i had. even on a postage stamp-sized area.
(and i’ve already wondered if we could borrow our neighbor’s tree for a swing! our other option is the one near the cul-de-sac)
It’s weird… I’ve been thinking a lot about the reasons not to live in the country. No neighbors to borrow sugar from, no other kids in the neighborhood, 20 minute commute to work, rabid raccoons, badgers, wood ticks… Some days I long for suburbia.
A lot of people do a 360 and eventaully go back to their roots don’t they?
I know what you mean about missing “something”. When I go home to England (that I get desperately homesick for) I feel like a tourist. It is one of the crosses we cosmopolitan women have to bear.
You can always make country vacations special for your kids each year.
ha, I couldnt have said it better of my own feelings.. You know though, when my mom still lived in Mobile, my step dad made a rope swing just like that one, with the wooden board and everything, for my kids to play on when they came to visit.. the LOVED it! course that was in mid-town with the huge oaks around. I wish at times that we could sell our house, and pack up and move!
the loss of ‘something you can’t name’ may be…that though you went home, ‘you can never go back’. it’s a nostalgia that aches…did I spell nostalgia right? My hometown hasn’t changed in 30 years…I miss it dearly…been gone 17 years…lol
the loss of ‘something you can’t name’ may be…that though you went home, ‘you can never go back’. it’s a nostalgia that aches…did I spell nostalgia right? My hometown hasn’t changed in 30 years…I miss it dearly…been gone 17 years…lol
There’s nothing wrong with rekindling with your roots. As Alan Jackson sings “It’s alright to be a redneck”. It’s where you place your values, not what you’ve aquired. Leaving and being the person you want is good. The roots will always there and should be shared as good times. There’s something to be said for simplicity. Make the trip more often (well try to) have your boys communicate with the folk back there. There has to be a park or woods nearby that you can visit.
” It’s quite elementry you are pondering this as a negative”
“but don’t y’all worry ’bout it, its cuz youz used to it and its all cozy like. a good thing”
Oh, and the tower isn’t that bad. Think of it as a beacon for your locale.
This is why our main goal is to buy some land outside of Mobile. I had to go back up to north Alabama last week for a funeral and took my youngest with me (he’s almost 4) My grandparents have 30 acres and he had a blast. It made me remember growing up when my brother and I would spend ALL summer there. Our favorite “toy”? June bugs we’d catch and tie string to their legs and let them “fly” with us. We’d come in for lunch and wouldn’t be back until dark. I understand your sadness, believe me.
I can’t wait to introduce my kid to the rope swing in my grandmother’s walnut tree on the farm. Her live in the center of Jerusalem is even farther removed from the rural life I grew up with than your kids in suburbia! So, no fear. at least you have grass they can play on!
I can’t wait to introduce my kid to the rope swing in my grandmother’s walnut tree on the farm. Her live in the center of Jerusalem is even farther removed from the rural life I grew up with than your kids in suburbia! So, no fear. at least you have grass they can play on!
There are no mature trees in the state of Utah that aren’t pines and aspen’s up in the mountains.
Any tree you see in the valley is a original or relative of one hauled here in a handcart and planted by the pioneers.
So, when I found a lot with NINE MATURE TREEES?
I effing bought it before I could blink three times.
P.S.
Utahn’s drop their “t”. “Moun’in” insteand of “MounTain”. It’s probably a good thing you and I will never spawn. Can you IMAGINE the dialect those poor children would have???
don’t get me started on my family!
heheheeh
Can’t find a link (OK, I’m too lazy to even look!) but I remember a study that showed that kids diagnosed with ADD, once they spent half an hour just walking through the woods every few days, no longer had any symptoms of ADD. (sorry for that atrocious sentence) Then there’s Last Child in the Woods – have you read that?
http://tinyurl.com/5bnort Here’s an article with an interview of the author: http://tinyurl.com/yuxcc4
Mirinda’s reminisces helped me remember doing the same as a child – outside from morning ’til dark. sigh We live in town – I’m very lucky to live where there are tons of mature trees, and a park close by. But no water they can play in, no woods like I had. I try not to put my stuff on them – just because their childhood is different, doesn’t make it worse. But I so treasured the time I had with trees, and our lake. My boys, literally, don’t know what they’re missing.
Hey, Awesome pictures! these pictures remind me of the days that I spent with my family, I miss my wife and kids a lot! I am sure they all are doing very well at the moment!
…oh, I think there's something about the country, wide open spaces, nature, and all of the exploring that little minds can muster….something about it is refreshing & exciting.
….and then I look around and see a total absense of Starbucks, variety in shopping, and rodens/creaturs/insects that dwell in that land called "the country", and I'm glad that "goin' into town" is not a part of my everyday language…
I'm just sayin'.
Leave my ass in the city.
…absence.
whoops.
I know how you feel. Suburbs Suck. From your description of it, I think you live in my neighborhood. Are you the house with black shutters or the green?
we spent a week in the country with my girly-girls.
and yes.
i had the same lingering thoughts. they had room to run. and i didn’t need to remind them of where the yard ended and the street began.
in my case though. the amount of beer drinking even drove me crazy.
not sure i need to be around that THAT much anymore. then again.
Just found you through another blog I read and wow…I get what you’re saying. I grew up in a Texas town of about 2,500. One stop light. One flashing light. I now live in a suburb of Houston, TX. And, yes, have those same mixed feelings when I visit–plus a whole lot more that just come from down-home family dysfunction. I’ll have to stop by this blog again!