Now for something completely different from the usual Culture Beat topics. A few weeks ago I had the chance to re-enter a world I grew up in and see faces I hadn’t seen in a generation. An uncle, my mother’s youngest sibling, died after a short illness and I drove from West Palm Beach where I now live, to Valdosta, GA, the small southern city I grew up in. Fifteen miles above the Florida line, it was as deep in the South as you can be before, going into the Florida peninsula, you continue downward until you move out of the south into something like the colony of culturally northeast where so many New Yorkers and other “northerners” now live full or part-time. The last time I had lived in Valdosta was in the latter half of the 1980s before moving to other parts of the southeast like Virginia, Tennessee and Atlanta.
When I got to the funeral home, I arrived with some trepidation; would there be faces of folks I’d known in my childhood who might remember me but I not recall them? My family was pretty well-known throughout the town so that this was a common experience–being greeted by a friend of my parents but awkwardly trying to recall who this gracious person was talking to me. Anyway, the funeral home was full of people lined up to meet my uncle’s surviving family, a testament to how loved he was. I soon met a man who I last known as a classmate in high school. He’d stayed to sell insurance, probably the family business, and though recognizable, showed the advance into middle age, his dark hair now thinner and grayer. He, of course, recognized me immediately and was as warm as ever. I saw a cluster of people across the room speaking to an older couple and someone reminded me that it was Mr. Wiggins who lived with his family a few blocks from my house. He must be in his 80s by now but his big smiling face and gracious manner was as strong as ever. What is it about insurance salesmen in small towns?
I knew there must be more people I knew and who must know me and wished we could all be wearing name tags like we were at some high school or family reunion so that we could quickly catch up–indeed, during that visit and the next day during the funeral, I felt eyes on me as they sought to recall from the recesses of memory just who I and my brothers were. These ghosts of forty or more years past haunted me the next few days as I pondered the choices of my life.
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(Embedded here is one of the many beautiful moss-shaded streets in Valdosta–follow the arrows for a little tour.)
Like a lot of Americans, I have mixed feelings about my hometown. Because it’s where you grew up, it’s the primal scene of your social orientation. I’ve used the word “gracious” more than once because that is the culture of southern middle-class people. One woman at the funeral reception saw me standing around talking to no one and struck up a conversation where she mentioned being a bridge partner with my mother–she initiated the conversation simply because she was a nice person who delighted in recalling the pleasantness of past associations. She wasn’t talky, she simply knew how to make a person relaxed and welcome, a pretty common trait that make “southern hospitality” so distinct.
I left Valdosta in my mid-twenties to follow my vision of serving God with a missions organization elsewhere in the country. I met my wife during this time; she’s from Illinois and when I introduced her to one of my southern gentlemen relations, he remarked as how the Lord could bring me together with a Yankee. I’m not saying it was provincial thinking, but it did sort of capture the nature of living in a certain small area all of your life and how remarkable it is when someone ventures out into a larger world. I left because I believed I was pursuing a vision and a purpose that couldn’t be found in the small world of my youth. My brothers did the same, leaving to live in other parts of the south and must have felt the same strange sense of wonder and stirred memories at the world left behind.
For this was the world that might have been if I had been more content and settled–these folks have the experience of being in the same community all their lives, of seeing friends and family grow, age, mature, struggle and be upheld by local bonds. I, on the other hand, have moved quite a few times as my vocational needs determined. I’ve met many good people but my ongoing relationships are not many and are spread out across the country and maintained by e-mail and occasional phone calls. Can I say who has the better deal? Should I?
I will. I wouldn’t have met my wonderful wife of over 25 years, nor had exposure to the ideas an opportunities I now enjoy in a larger world of ideas and vocation that allows me to contribute immeasurably to the minds of many young people. It’s axiomatic to say that each choice we make forecloses others, and the longer we move on, the narrower our options until one day we look back and wonder, not with regret, but curiosity, what might have been.
very well said!
Comment by Jim — May 17, 2010 @ 12:52 am |
My condolences to your family for the loss.
The piece is very well written. I know the feeling…. from your wife’s perspective, anyway. Last October, we went back to my husband’s home town to pay a surprise visit to his grandmother and uncle. He’s from deep in the Ozarks, and if you know anything about those types, they’re rather clannish. Not very big on outsiders. They raced to make my husband feel welcome again. Me… not so much. It’s not that they were rude. They were welcoming and polite. But where he’s from, everyone marries people from their little town. And few go very far.
It was an interesting time to be there, because his church/bible school was having their annual “convocation”. It’s almost like a class reunion/revival meeting. One young man from his school became a missionary, and traveled all the way to INDIANA! (You read that correctly.) His wife of course, was from same said small town.
I asked Keith on our way home after a week there if he missed any of it. He said he missed his grandmother, and his uncles. And he missed the pretty fall colors. But none of the people he went to school with, even though they welcomed him back, seemed to have any interest in catching up. (Interestingly enough, the one person he DIDN’T want to see, his biological father, did take the time to catch up with us. It was a hard time for Keith, but some healing has come of it. They still don’t talk much, but at least there’s some kind of bond.)
He said he’s glad he moved down to Florida. If he hadn’t he would have missed a lot of years spent with his mother and brothers and sisters. And he wouldn’t have met me. And of course, he wouldn’t have met one of the people who made a huge impact on his life: my grandmother. She essentially taught him how to be independent. She taught him about financial security, about overcoming his shyness and standing up for himself. About what it would take to be a husband and father. And mostly, she taught him about Jesus.
He was already saved at 17. But without a solid Christian family around to nurture him in the faith, he was withering quickly. They would spend long mornings (when I was in college, and he moved in to take care of her) listening to radio preachers, reading the Bible, and discussing faith, theology, and Scripture. I may be his wife, but my grandmother helped change him forever.
Sometimes God leads us on paths that we would never choose for ourselves. But that’s part of what makes life an adventure.
(BTW, we drove through Valdosta on our way up there last October. The pictures don’t do it justice. It really is quite beautiful.)
Comment by ashley — May 19, 2010 @ 1:31 pm |
Thanks, Ashley. Fascinating the paths we lead. Was Keith in FL because that’s where his mother and sisters were/are?
Comment by Alex — May 19, 2010 @ 1:47 pm |
Yes. When he was little, his mom couldn’t afford to take care of him and his older brother. She she left them with her mother in Missouri. When his older brother was about 8 or 9, they went back to live with mom, who was now in Ft. Lauderdale. She had remarried by this time. But when mom couldn’t afford private school for both of them, she sent Keith back to Missouri, and kept Ken with her, since Kenny was older, I suppose.
Keith went back and forth between Florida and Missouri a few more times, then finally settled down here when he was 17, mostly because he was tired of transferring schools every other year. Whenever people ask him where he’s from, he always says:
North Carolina, then Indiana, Missouri, Florida, Missouri, Florida, Missouri, Florida.
Oddly enough, he was born in NC on a marine base right outside the town where my grandmother grew up. She dated a lot of marines off that base in her late teens and early 20s.
I could tell you the complete story of how we met sometime. It’s make an interesting film, I think, since Keith thought God meant him for singleness, and I always figured if I got married, it would be to someone who tolerated me, not loved me. (I had a lot of insecurities when I was younger. Blame it on the perfectionism.) It had to be God that brought us together, because we certainly weren’t looking for each other.
Comment by ashley — May 19, 2010 @ 1:59 pm |