The DCG Has an Epiphany

If you had told me one year ago that at 24 I would have uprooted my entire life and career and moved to a city where I knew virtually no one, that I would be looking in a mirror in an upstairs bathroom, straightening my hair and listening to a bunch of goofy boys freestyling to jam band music downstairs ad thinking how happy I was, that I'd be talking to my mother on the phone and convincing her that I really did love a city covered in 50 inches of snow and never wanted to move back to my beloved South, I would have pushed my feet a little farther into the sand, looked out at the ocean and told you that you obviously didn't know me very well.

But apparently the joke was on me.

I think it is so funny to think about where I was this time last year, even 7 months ago, and how different the place I am in now is from the place I'd dreamed that I'd be.  Up to the moment I pulled out of my driveway, I didn't really think I would do it.  I couldn't leave behind my entire family, my entire heart, and go to some city that I had been once.  What would I do when I got there?  What if I hated my roommates?  What would I do for a job? A bed?  What if I couldn't make any friends?

I was petrified.  I was leaving everything, EVERYTHING, that I had ever known behind on some crazy need to start anew.  I couldn't do it.  But I did.  And I'll never regret it.

I'm sitting in Beardy's bed, listening to him and his friends sing everything from classics to improvised songs about Shakeweights while they strum lazily on guitars.  Tears are literally rolling out of my eyes.

I pull my tank top over my damp hair and look out the window at the mounds of snow outside and count the days until Spring.  My shoulders tense up when I think that I only have two days left until I have to go back to work, and the pressure of being an English major in an accounts receivable job.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.  I can't remember the last time I was this happy.  And I think that is the most ridiculous thought I have ever had.  Because I'm a Southern girl...to the core.  I can't live without my family.  I'm supposed to hate the cold and the snow and the business of the city.  But I can't imagine myself anywhere else now.

I guess the point of this story is that you can't plan for things.  I mean you can, but it probably won't work out that way.  Things will change, you will change and you will find out new things about yourelf that you ever would have thought you were capable of.  Your dreams won't come true, and I thank God that mine haven't.  Because my dreams of yesterday would have led me somewhere else today.  And that would just be tragic.

Last Day in Town

So it is officially my last day in town.  I'm spending the day with my family, and I have to say, they make it a little hard for me to leave.  I have a very tight-knit group, and I'm going to miss them terribly.  I know tomorrow, as I drive away, I'll be crying like a baby.

Old South Rising

Today, I sat under a tarp in a cemetery and watched as my grandfather was lowered into the ground.  It was hot and not just to the point that it was uncomfortable.  I mean "feel like your skin is burning when the sun touches it, hair clinging to your neck after 5 minutes of being outside" hot.

My grandfather lived in the Lowcountry of South Carolina- the land of Spanish moss and people who smell the pluff mud and think of it as a sort of "Welcome Home" from the land that they are so tightly tied to.  The people who live here are a different breed- they consider you family once you've sat down and had a meal with them, they live and breathe the land that they work so hard to help yield the livelihood of their families, and they always find someway of leaving an everlasting impression on your heart- no matter where you head to after you leave.

As I sat there, surrounded by family (blood and "adopted"), I couldn't help but soak in the wonderfulness of the life of a Southerner.  My grandfather's remaining brothers and sisters (4 of the original 12 are still living) sat together, acting as if they had never left eachother's side, and all the grievances that they held had melted away when they heard one of their youngest brothers was sick and needed their help.  My "highfalutin'" great aunt held her head high, almost regally, as she rested her hand on her older brother's knee as he wept into her shoulder.  On the other side of him sat the other brother, who traveled the world and settled in Texas, making deer sausage and writing postcards to the family he left behind.  They did not try to hold back their tears, but in true Southern fashion, they remained as reserved and proud as the pastor spoke of their late sibling.

People were sniffling and crying, and tissues were passed around, as much for the tears as for the sweat that trickled down the chins and the throats, making the grief only seem more real.  I looked at these people, who drawled their soft "r's" and who would suffer a blizzard to watch one of their fellow kinsmen be committed to God, and thought of how much the Old South still survived.  And as an African American sergeant folded the flag that rested upon the coffin that held my grandfather and sat it in my grandmother's lap, I watched her cover his dark hand with her pale one, thanking him for honoring her husband; I realized that maybe some of it had died and something more beautiful had been born and was growing in its place.  (They still have a long way to go, but prayerfully the lines of race that have marred the life of Lowcountriers for so long will finally start to fade.)  The pastor boomed his wonderful, deep southern voice across the yard, teetering on the edge of comfort and the fire and brimstone that only men from the southern part of the country can achieve.

I was comforted by these people, my people, and the things that I saw.  I thought "How blessed I am for getting to experience a life such as this."  I will miss the South; it has been ingrained in my soul in such a way that I know I cannot ever fully leave it behind.  And today, I knew that I would never want to.