Thursdays are our at-home days. We spend the rest of the week driving back and forth to preschool and Bible Study and playdates, but Thursdays, we have no agenda. We can just stay home. This past Thursday, I bundled the kids up and placed them in the double jogging stroller, a blanket on top of their little legs, and we walked to the library.
I love my neighborhood. Is it as rare as I think it is to walk through your neighborhood, on the way to the library, no less, and rattle off your neighbor's names as you pass their houses? As we walked by gardens just waking up from winter and homes with gigantic white columns and wrap-around porches, I decided to strike up a conversation with Story.
"Do you know what 'Southern' means?" I asked.
"No," she replies.
It has only just occurred to me, as we pass by a tremendous magnolia, that she is, in fact, a child of the South. Born in Austin, and with a daddy who will always seem more Colorado than Carolina, she seems, somehow, not quite of this place.
"What's 'Southern' means?" she asks.
Well, I think to myself, that's going to take some time to try to answer.
My Mom gave me Reese Witherspoon's book, Whiskey in a Teacup for Christmas. As I sat reading it one afternoon on the sofa in my living room, it dawned on me that I don't need to be ashamed of being Southern. I was raised on sweet tea and Jesus like any other Southern girl, but along the way, I met a lot of people from a lot of places. Such is life in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home to Ft. Bragg.
A lot of people who come to Ft. Bragg can't help but talk about how they can't stand the South. It used to really bother me, and I felt defensive, but then somewhere in time, I think I went vanilla about the whole thing. It's hard to keep on caring. Especially because most of those people who complain so much will leave in a few years anyway. People come to Ft. Bragg from everywhere in the world, and most of them have their own well-developed sense of what home ought to look and feel like. I've learned not to begrudge them that, even if in reality, home is likely to be more a state of mind than a state of the nation. Even so, there are some memories that I cannot shake. A former boyfriend who incessantly insulted my mother's wallpaper, and who got viscerally angry over the fact that my mother had an African American housekeeper named Katie. And the girl at my bridal shower who poked fun at me for wearing black swiss dot panty-hose with my forest green dress, and who could not get over the fact that I'd had bridal portraits taken (she had never heard of such a thing!) I reckon that, over the years, I developed a feeling that, at the very least, I ought to be sort of ashamed of being Southern. I felt like other people were utterly convinced that the South was filled with nothing but ignorance, humidity and mosquitoes, and though I've honestly never felt this way myself, I couldn't muster the strength or desire to go on defending it.
I know there are some people who are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum of thought. Who would ever feel embarrassed of being Southern? Pour them some sweet tea in a monogramed glass and sing them Dixie- this is the South and they're proud of it. I don't begrudge them either. I suppose everyone is entitled to their home state of mind.
I guess that I'm not so worried about what those people said about my panty-hose or my mother's wallpaper anymore, nor am I going to monogram everything that doesn't move (sorry Reese), but I am beginning to see that it's important for me to start to tell my little ones about the South- and here's one reason why...
On my run today, I ran back through my sweet neighborhood to the museum that stands just on the other side of the train track from the library. I stopped and took a couple of pictures of the statue out front. It's a statue of the General William C. Lee, a renowned General from Dunn who served bravely in the 101st Airborne during World Wars I and II, and it was set ablaze a few nights ago. The museum curator was on the news earlier this week explaining that he supposes some "jerks" (his word, not mine) set it on fire, thinking it was a statute of the other General Lee.
On Thursday, I walked and pointed out things to Story- "See that camellia, that's Southern. So many beautiful colors! Let's see how many colors we can collect. And that magnolia tree? That's Southern too. It has the sweetest smell in high summer. Those letters on your jacket? That's your monogram. That's very Southern."
We returned from the library with The Story of Ruby Bridges, and I explained, to the best of my ability, how people in the South used to be really mean to black people. (Well, first I had to explain what "black" and "white" meant because it was impossible to understand the plot without that backstory) Story was incredulous and asked, appropriately, time and again, "Why? Why?"And I had to tell her the truth- that it was sin, and a sin that surely grew riper in this Southern soil than in other places in our country.
I told Story on our walk that as she learns about the South there will be things she likes, and things she doesn't. There are things that are silly, and some that are so pretty they'll take your breath away. Others are ugly and unfair and some unspeakably sad. It seems more clear than ever that I should tell her the truth about this place, even as I continue to discover it. Confusion and ignorance fuels the fire of bitterness. But there is still time for truth, and with it, I hope, empathy, humility and peace.
When some people think of this place, they might think it ignorant and unpleasant, but, to me, this place will always be home. And it's up to people just like me to ensure that nothing is forgotten or swept under the rug. Because if people from the South don't invest in our own story, then what will be told about it from the outside? There's a lot to learn and a lot of ways to keep on growing. There's a lot of soil that needs kindness planted where hatred once was. So I'll keep planting empathy and truth. Because, to me, that's Southern.
