Native

I went to see a play tonight about the Civil War - no, a play about General Sherman's march across Georgia and the Carolinas to burn and pillage.

Now, I was born and raised South Carolina.  And tonight it was brought home to me how much that statement might ring differently for different people.  Here's more or less where I stand.

Myself, I have complicated feelings about the Civil War.  No, I do not believe any population of any race should have ever been enslaved.  I believe that was wrong.  I believe it is possible that there were slave owners that were kind to their slaves, even though I'm betting those people didn't treat their slaves as equals and therefore were of course still contributing to the larger problem: that pretending you own another person is disgraceful, dishonest, and demeaning.

But I also think the Civil War had other causes and issues in it besides slavery.  And despite the fact that I do not support the "Cause" that many southerners were upholding, I still have pity and sympathy for the many people who were caught up in that fight and were destroyed systematically along Sherman's way.  I do not find it hard to understand that some of those people were good people who believed their way of life was righteous and supportable.

Fast forward to my experience of living in the South in modern day:  yes, there is closed-mindedness there.  There is bigotry.  There is insularity and misplaced pride and among some a devotion to a lost cause cemented by being mindless and impractical.

Having said all that:

The South is so beautiful, truly beautiful.  There's a care taken that comes from being a part of a place for generations.  Spring bursts from pear trees like someone throwing confetti.  Ginko trees bleach gold in fall and shed all their leaves in one swoop of an afternoon, like a lady flicking off a golden dress.  People smile and ask after your father and mother.  Back roads have decaying barns and cotton fields.  Houses have porches and rocking chairs, lawns have tractor tires.  Snow is a blanket that halts all activity and frees everyone for snowballs and snowmen, but rarely lasts more than a day.  Ocean sand is an open palm into a warm, friendly sea.  And the old houses...so beautiful, corinthian columns and dental work and gingerbread and turrets and wooden floors and fourteen foot ceilings and detail and workmanship.

And the people, the people can be unspeakably beautiful, can bring food to a funeral or help a neighbor in need or feed the neighborhood because a storm knocked out the power and all the food in the freezer would go bad otherwise.  Your family can be odd and crazy, because it's a heritage in the south, craziness, and we cherish it, we encourage crazy, it makes life interesting, and we like things to be interesting.

Above all, the south is haunted by history, buoyed by history, choked by history, hampered by history, obsessed by history, emboldened by history, nurtured by history.  It kills us and frees us all at once.  It's a ladder and a shackles.

I miss the South.  I long for it.  I have it with me all the time.

I need to drive through it soon.  I need to go...home.