I Didn't Know It Was The Last Time

That winter, the snow fell in blankets. I dug my small hands in the snow off the side of the porch. Stacking groceries from our refrigerator in the caves I had made after the electricity had gone out. Always careful not to get too close to the kerosene heater inside. The winter before, I had fallen on it and burned my cheeks and hands.

Dressed in a fluffy pink snowsuit, fitted with two rabbit ears on the hood and one cottontail on the back seam, I fussed. I hated these snow clothes! I cried. I cried because I didn’t want to go and cried again when it was time to go home. This became a theme of my life I still haven’t outgrown.

The next summer, I waded creeks with bare feet. Picked wildflowers from the fields. Sat on my Granny’s countertops, feet dangling wild — and eating fresh, frozen strawberries with sugar from a blue plastic cup. Shucked corn and cut up tomatoes for canning. Gobbled up fresh blackberries in pies, cobblers, and cakes.

Winters and summers were full of these same adventures. But once, on no particular day, it was the last time. I didn’t know it would be the last time. I didn’t know that 30 years later I would stand at the bottom of that once snow-covered hill. Or run my hands across the same countertop. Softly chuckling while the rain of memories would slip down my cheeks.

I didn’t know that life would hand you last time days. Perhaps that’s the cruelest thing of all.

Home-Home

Yesterday I made the long drive from where I live to “home”. Home is a funny concept when you grow up and move away. An experience difficult to describe. Where I live as an adult with my husband is home. But where I came from is home too. It’s a home hierarchy. Home-home, where I cut my teeth as a girl, and home where my adult self grows.

There’s a twang in my voice here that I don’t recognize. Buried someplace deep in my bones and only audible in this place. Words that I long since dumped from the vocabulary of my upbringing. Words that lose half their letters when they step across my lips. Here and there become ‘ere and air. Others are easier to recognize. Ort. Oughtta. Gonna. Fixin’ to. Dreckly.

I know now that these words and this accent became hidden because of codeswitching. But I didn’t know that as a young woman. Instead, my hillbilly accent shamed me to my core. Today, I just let the words fall out however they’d like. It’s better this way.

I cried that I didn’t want to come home. And I cried again when it was time to leave.

I hail from the hills and the hollers of Appalachia. Where the roads have no lines and the air is feral — untouched by polluted air or progress. Rolling hills of mostly farmland, dotted with homes and cultural divides. Appalachia where people pride themselves on privacy but strong community ties. So-and-so knows so-and-so. And that so-and-so is somebody else’s so-and-so’s daughter. She went to school with you, don’t you know?

It’s the one thing I hated most of all growing up and the one thing I miss most of all now. I love the anonymity I have in my adult home. But I miss the familiarity of home-home. Front porch visits, Sunday dinners, and Saturdays spent taking your time.

This week is about that. Slowing down and sucking life in. It’s a strange cruel twist of growing up, see? You become so focused on getting to adulthood, then getting the first adult job, marriage, kids, on and on.

You forget that while you are growing up, others are too.

I skipped steps after I moved away. One or two years look like 10 or more on the face of people I no longer see every day. Stray gray hairs became white cotton tops in what seems like an instant.

Coming home becomes entwined with barbed wire. One part comfort and two parts pain. It’s easy to stay away because of this. The emotional toll tears its teeth into the soft skin of youth. Invisible scar tissue forms in the space that used to be tender and naïve.

This week is about that too. There are fences that need fixin’ and divides that need fillin’. I can’t fix a decade-plus of this damage. I can’t apologize for growing up. Still, I can do better about existing today, with one foot in front of me and one foot behind me.

So that’s what I’m doing now. Letting the porch swing sway me gently. Taking in the sounds of stray birds through streams of sunshine. And listening for the whippoorwill and cicada songs to show me the way.

Though it pains me deeply to think, perhaps this is the last time too. And maybe I liked it better when I didn’t have an awareness that last times happen.