Home

I love the South.  God, I love it.  My mother has put camellias and narcissus in my room and it's warm in December and I can walk to my best friend's house in a minute and I'll see the ocean tomorrow.  And everyone sounds friendly, even when they aren't (don't let people tell you that what they sound is "ignorant" - those people don't know jack shit about the south), in fact, they sound especially friendly when they AREN'T friendly.  And my aunt's house is a proper house, wood and high ceilings and a big front porch and creaky and old and rickety, and my mother's house is a blessed nightmare in exactly the right way and she still has her nightgown and robe on at 5 pm because she was too busy to get dressed because she is beautiful and crazy and completely lacking in the feeling that any part of herself should change because it sounds crazy to you. 

Also, she just plain didn't get that far.

I know tomorrow the temperature will drop and it will just be cold and rainy, but right now it's in the 60s and it feels like...I don't know, like my hair will curl properly in this humidity and the ground buoys my feet and I'm almost myself again, though in a few days it will feel like this is the farthest from myself I will ever get, when the expectations keep coming and I continue to fail at being the perfect daughter/sister/niece/aunt and no one seems to know who I really am down at the center of myself. Or care.

Right now none of that matters.  I'm just home.  It smells right.

I just want to sit down and write out the story of my grandmother I heard for the first time today.  Turns out she threw over her Citadel boyfriend after he painted her two pictures and wrote her a poem saying she could keep the pink picture and he'd keep the blue picture and it would mean they'd always remember each other.  She broke it off and ended up married to my grandfather, but somehow kept both paintings and had them hanging in her living room for the rest of her life.  Until she was 89.

It's just nice to be back where my history lives, and remind myself of where I fit in it.  All three of my names can be read on the gravestones of my ancestors.

Oh, Christ.  I just realized I have to post this, because in a few years this house will get sold and it won't ever be the same, there won't be a "home" to come home to, and this note will be like a homeopathic remedy, the almost reminder of what return actually feels like.  It feels like...like Christmas.