Cocktail Party

I got an invitation yesterday. A lovely watercolour of a white front door with red flowers blooming around it, overlaid with see-through paper printed in a refined font with lots of flourishes, invited me to a cocktail party in honour of my cousin and his fiance, who are getting married in June. The party is in South Carolina, in a little town called Trenton. Trenton is only about four streets wide by three streets long, and that's not an exaggeration. It's where my great grandmother held court until she was buried at the Ebeneezer Baptist Church. She likely had some reservations about being buried in the Baptist Cemetery, as she was a loyal Presbyterian, but according to my grandmother (her daughter), somehow all the cemeteries are Baptist.

I can't go to this cocktail party, but I wish that I could. A longing came to me like a flock of birds settling in a tree. There's something about that place that seems to own me. The streets are named for my ancestors, the town is full of my distant cousins, and even forgetting those connections, there's something necessary about celebrating a family event. I may exaggerate the historical significance of the place, since I didn't grow up there and have very few memories of that community, but the fact is that the nucleus of my mother's family is there, like the hub of a wheel.

My feeling of identification with the location is, I'll admit, Romanticizes. Another cousin was a teacher at the high school in this area for years - a school that until very recently, held separate proms for black and white students. I find that idea mind-boggling, but that's part of the reality of that community. The South is a complicated place, and I love its complexity, but I can't deny I am naive to much of its limitations.

So I have an acknowledged advantage when I think of home - I think of the fine and the beautiful things. I may be hundreds of miles away, I may live in a much more liberal place, but I appreciate a community that throws parties for its young brides and bridegrooms, and I appreciate that my family has been a part of that community for a very, very long time.

And while I may not agree with everyone's politics, I sure wish I could fly down and have a drink with those people.