Two Essays on Home
On Spanish Moss and Longing
Germany, North Carolina, Kansas, Tennessee, Georgia, D.C., Virginia, and Chicago. I have moved eight times so far in my life, not including brief stopovers in Ohio and Maryland. I plan on only increasing this trend. With my dad being military, moving was always a part of my life. It is not the tragedy many people who come from one house, one hometown, and one group of friends think it is. For me, it simply is.
My inability to linger in any one place does not stop my feelings of nostalgia. I remember some states fondly. North Carolina is all small-town feel and pine trees that seem smaller when I go back. Kansas stands out as a haven that was run by the kids living there. Tennessee still holds my favorite laser tag spot, my favorite pub, and one of my favorite museums. D.C. continues to lead me to political protests and the history of walking in shadows of Founding Fathers. Does that make them perfect? No.
North Carolina remains too small for me. Kansas is boring at best, all cornfields from state line to state line. Tennessee lacks the friends I had, and reminds me of Walmart just as much as laser tag. D.C. is crowded with constant traffic and the people have an anxious busyness that I take on too easily. I don’t remember living in Germany, which I count as a negative.
Every place I live is unique and I know that moving means leaving something else be- hind. My parents have a sign up that says “Home is where the Dog is,” which reigns especially true in my house.
Yet, Georgia gets stuck in my veins in ways the other places don’t. I get there for third grade and I’m determined to dislike it. I do not want a Southern accent at all. There is no “Y’all” or “Yes, Ma’am” or “Bless her heart” in my home anyways. The kids at school are meaner and more creative with name-calling then I am used to. Luckily, I have moved 5 times and am not frightened. However, the strange way of sounding nice and yet spitting poison does not sit well with me. There are uniforms in school here. Some uniforms are in the school rule books: shirts must be tucked and all students are required to wear a belt. Some are not: Vera Bradley, monogrammed cups, and Sperrys. The pack of neighborhood kids that I run with are fun but not as fun as the packs of Tennessee. My bus ride to school is an hour long with eighty kids on it.
The brackish air still gets to me. The bus ride to school crosses a marsh just as the sun begins rising. I press my face against the cool glass to get a look at the long golden grass and the water rippling orange in the sun’s rays. My swarm of neighbors take to the swamp building makeshift houses that teeter in the flooded forest. I fight back against insults with such fire that I end up sitting in the back of the bus with the “cool” kids. We have dinners on the water with seafood so fresh you can see the boats it’s taken off of. Seafood that is always caked in butter and served with hush puppies and she-crab stew. My parents seem to be experts at finding every strangely hidden and delicious restaurant. I do not learn the Southern accent, but I don’t hate saying y’all.
Savannah pulls me in like an old friend with promises of an era long gone. A city built of cobblestones, brightly colored Italianate houses, and squares heavy with Live Oaks. My family still seems to speak of Spanish Moss in a poetry of longing. St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah beats St. Patrick’s Day everywhere else in the world- Chicago may dye the river but Savannah’s historic fountains turning green idles in my memory. The historic Pirate House makes my already pirate-obsessed self shake with excitement; at twelve years old, the idea that Blackbeard could have eaten in the same room as me makes me cry in happiness. Alligators laze around in the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge twenty minutes outside of the city. They are less appealing in our neighborhood pool.
On weekends, my family visits beaches all across Georgia and South Carolina. Some are big touristy areas with mini-golf and boogie boarding for my brother and I. Some have the quiet of hiking and the exhilaration of jumping to avoid a cottonmouth. Jekyll even boasts a water park, a sea turtle center, and a historic hotel. (I never hide from my family that Jekyll Island is where I want to be.) One weekend my dad takes me down to Okefenokee Swamp and we marvel along raised pathways, inches away from alligators bigger than me. Nature seems to run a little wilder here than anywhere else I have lived. One island near my house is known for its wild boars—I envy my brother’s camping there. There is a banana spider larger than my face by our front door, and my neighbors go to war against a family of possums.
Savannah is not perfect to me. I’m aware of the massive gentrification problem in the city and the history of racism that soaks the South. Just as I’m aware of the pollution problem the city faced in the past from factories on the river. I am still far from having a Southern mentality and don’t really want one. I can’t imagine going back right now and being happy about living in a city that seems so stuck in its own past.
I cannot say why Savannah managed to ensnare me so fully. Distance could be making my heart fonder, surely? Beauty is an obvious reason, but I have lived in other beautiful places. The people are great but not as warm as our friends in North Carolina. Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of nature pressed against the “Most Haunted City in the United States.” The delicious southern food and miles and miles of waterways? Perhaps, it is that my formative years are spent here and not the other nine places. Or maybe it’s that my brother and I got to hang out together here before we were split by travel soccer, school, and a distance made out of a lack of time for one another. It could be just the pirates.
I still hope for a historic home in Savannah where I can live right downtown, on the river, or a square. I can share it with my family, having been half of what made Savannah so great for me originally. I can go to St. Patrick’s Day parades, seafood festivals, and every pirate-related event that sweeps through. The stink of the marsh will seem familiar again instead of nauseating.
Not yet, though.
For now, I’ll keep moving houses and when I’m tired of that, I will pack a bag and keep traveling onwards. There are more places calling to me, waiting to grab a hold of me, and I must go.
Homes Left Behind
Growing up, my Great Grandpa, Bob, owned a farm in rural Ohio.
Despite it being years since I’ve even driven by the farm, I can picture it perfectly. A line of trees led down the driveway and, if I looked carefully, I could sometimes see deer standing out in the field just past the trees. At the end of the driveway, an old farmhouse stood on the left and a barn on the hill to the right. Sometimes we would run up to the entrance of the barn and then roll all the way down the hill. It always left me itchy, imagining bugs crawling on my skin afterward, but still grinning uncontrollably. The garage—the largest I had ever seen—held all the farming equipment and was off near the house.
I hardly spent any time in the house though that’s where Great Grandpa Bob spent most of his time. I can remember a comfy-looking chair that swiveled so that he could see us anywhere in the den. There was a little stuffed dog that sat on one of the tables near his spot. I must have stared at it with some envy as a kid because I left one visit with the stuffed animal in my arms. I would pat the taxidermy fox on the snout when I entered his room, despite knowing that Great Grandpa Bob had hunted him down already.
After we said hi, we were allowed into the garage. The garage was the coolest part of the property because we were allowed up onto the huge John Deer tractor’s and some of the older tractors and equipment. Then, we’d go out on the four wheelers—two of them, with my brother sitting in front of my Grandpa Mike and me sitting in front of my dad. We’d race around the property past the stone pile where a groundhog would occasionally show his head before scuttling off. My Grandpa would point out trees that had their barked stripped off in spots from deer rubbing their scent on it. Occasionally, Grandpa Mike would bring my brother out to shoot at tiny metal targets shaped like animals. I’d beg to go and Grandpa Mike would eventually let me. I didn’t like shooting very much, but the clang of the shiny animals getting hit and tumbling over was satisfying. Plus, I was determined to do anything my brother did.
At night, my mom’s whole family would come out for a “Weiner roast.” A huge bonfire would get built up in the back of the farm. It was an open area surrounded on all sides by the little woods that were on the property. My brother, my cousin, and I would run off to play in the scrap metal that was nearby. You couldn’t see much of it from the front of the four wheeler, making it one of the best places to play—though caution was always advised. Once we started getting tired, it was time for hotdogs. They were always perfect, smoky in a way that only food cooked directly over a fire is. Then we’d spend the rest of the night talking to relatives that we may not see again for months or longer. And then we’d drive back to my grandparent’s house through the dark treelined driveway.
Great Grandpa Bob was the oldest person I had ever met at the time. He suffered from Alzheimer’s, which got progressively worse as we got older. My Grandpa Mike ended up selling the farm not long after he passed.
I can’t remember how to get to the family farm anymore.
I can picture the roads, but anytime I’m back in Ohio, the directions blur in my mind until I can’t remember if it was east of town or west. I’ve always been good with directions, but suddenly I feel lost between the cornfields.
I have two younger cousins who never got to go four wheeling or to a Weiner roast. They never got to meet Great Grandpa Bob or look for deer on the property. I can’t imagine. It still feels intrinsic when I’m in Ohio to go to the farm. Even though I haven’t been since I got into the double digits. I drive by a farm near my house in Virginia that has a treelined driveway and can’t help but sigh longingly.
*
My dad told me the family home on his side of the family is likely going to be sold soon.
My aunt is ready for a much shorter walk to the mailbox and I understand. I don’t know that house or Arkansas as well. Last time I went, I didn’t pack any warm clothes because I thought it’d be hot in the South. I was treated instead to cold days in the mountains.
It felt like a familiar dream being back in Arkansas. I remembered sleeping on the screened-in porch next to my brother. My aunt has a new dog, but she is mistakable as a bear with all the hair and mass. She had the same breed when I went around 10. The house leaves the same impression as before, but also feeling strangely foreign. The pool I used to swim in is filled in. I drive Aunt Pat around the whole trip and try to ignore how old that makes me feel.
On my most recent visit, I hiked up to the natural springs on the property and took a long slow drink. The water was cool and tasted natural, all minerals. Did my family do this, too? When my dad and I take a roundabout way back, I can look out on the whole property laid out before me. It is strange to feel I know a place that I do not.
I want to know more and more about my dad’s grandparents. I want to remember my mom’s grandparents better, too. Great Grandpa Bob is the only one I can even remember meeting. Am I truly anymore connected to them just because of the land I’m on? It’s not like my family has always lived at either location. The houses are five generations old, maximum. Yet, I looked through the garage at my Aunt’s house and couldn’t help but wonder about the tools in the garage and what they had built. I think about Great Grandpa Bob’s love of hunting and think that maybe I would have tried it if it was with him.
Should I care so much about people that are gone? This is family that I haven’t met or have been gone for years. Yet, I think of my sense of humor and wonder if it came from my mom or dad and who did they get it from? If my personality is built from the people I’ve known then surely I’m connected to my family even from years and years ago.
When I feel further and further from my family, especially those who have already passed, I need items to help recollect. I don’t know if land can hold a memory but when I look at a tree-lined drive or hear of natural springs, I think of these homes that are further and further from me.
Rylie Smedley is studying Film and Interdisciplinary Documentary at Columbia College Chicago. She grew up all over the country, coming from a military family, but is now living between Chicago and Virginia. Rylie has been published in the Fairfax Connection and FCPS Community News and has had a documentary shown in Manifest. She loves spending time in nature, exploring the city, and playing sports.