No Place Like Home

No Place like Home

A couple of years ago, I moved two thousand miles from my home in south east Georgia to south west Colorado. My new husband was raised in the mountains of the west and wished to return. I grew up with a military father and had moved often as a child, so I assumed that with a new marriage and with my children pretty much grown, that I would have no problem with the move. I rationalized that it would give me a change and may even be an adventure and a chance to see and do new things.

I was so very wrong. Everything was so different than what I knew. The climate was strange. The environment was strange, the birds, the wildlife, the smells, the available foods, even the people. I learned a lot about myself. I came to realize that I had always taken our southern hospitality and ways of living for granted. I learned very quickly that I was in the wrong place. Sure, there were some beautiful places and lots of things to see and do, but it all became old very, very quickly. After much pleading and praying, much thinking, lots of financial planning and a bit of luck, we finally made it back to Brunswick.

I learned that I am not from the mountains; I am a flatlander, born and bred. I am not from a place where the rain evaporates before it even hits the ground, where narrow, shallow creeks are called rivers, where the tallest trees are little more than shrubs, where the only colors you see are shades of brown, gray, and dull green and where flowers do not bloom in spring because of the cold. I am from a place where the rivers are wide and deep and flow down to kiss the ocean. I am from a lush, almost tropical area where the land meets the sea, where the trees are tall and the flowers bloom, sometimes all year. The marsh mud runs deep in my veins. The colors, the scents and the sounds of Coastal Georgia are all a part of what makes me who I am today.

The history of this area is part of me as well, as I have ancestors who settled the area when parts of Georgia were still considered to be frontier. I have ancestors who fought in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War who were born, lived, died and are buried within an hour or two’s drive. These ancestors paved the way for those of us who came after. They planted, they fought, and they raised their families back in the very beginnings of the state. It became home to them, as it is home to me.

It is here that holds my fondest memories. This is where I began life as a “Navy Brat”, the child of a sailor and a sharecropper’s daughter. It’s where I started to school, learned to ride a bicycle, fed the birds at the old Hardee’s restaurant and ate M&M’s in a downtown park with my granddaddy. It’s where I learned to drive, spent my teenage wild years, and used to go to the feed store and play with the baby chicks when I was small. It‘s where I finished growing up, and where I started my own family. I have experienced new life here with the birth of my children, my niece, and several new cousins. I have also seen death here with the loss of my grandparents, an uncle and my father. So many memories, even the sad ones, which also makes it home to me .

The dawn breaks with the chirping of the birds. The sun is just rising and giving a warm orange glow to the early morning sky. In the distance I hear a dog bark and a log truck go by on the highway. The azaleas are blooming in splashes of pink and the wisteria vines have begun their show of lavender blooms as well. Spanish moss sways in the breeze, almost seeming to drip off of the giant, old live oak trees. The grass glistens with the morning dew.

The scents of early morning are quite mixed - a combination of pine forest, magnolia blooms, newly mown grass, freshly turned earth and salt air. Even though it is still quite early, it is already warm and the humidity is high letting you know you are on the southern Georgia coast. The temperatures have already hit the 70’s during the day and it is only the beginning of March. Everything around speaks of spring, yet you are teased with a hint of the long hot summer to come. Flowers and bedding plants are crowded into the local stores. Gardeners have already begun to plow and plant most of their garden vegetables.

I sit on my front porch, cup of coffee in hand, watching a huge red-headed woodpecker seek his fortune in the bark of the big pine tree in my front yard. I watch the doves on the ground under my bird feeder and hear the mockingbirds and jays call to each other. This evening, I’ll be able to watch the hummingbirds at the feeder and listen to the crickets and whippoorwills, or maybe even go down to the river and fish a while before dark catches me. After being away from this area for quite some time, I have come to realize how important it is to me it is to simply see, feel, hear and smell the familiar. I now know what “having roots” really means, how important family ties are and how important all the little things are that I will never again take for granted.

I can relate to the fictional Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, as even though I may have had an adventure, seen new things and met new people, I have learned there truly is “no place like home, there’s no place like home”……