I’m on the floor watching Punky Brewster. Punky lives in Chicago, Illinois, with her dog Brandon and her foster dad, Henry. “Me and J.W. used to live in Chicago,” she says from behind me.
I can’t believe anyone I know has ever lived anywhere but here.
She tells me that after the Depression, lots of poor people moved up to Chicago in the 1940s to work in factories because there wasn’t any work back home. They’d gone with several of my grandfather’s brothers and their wives, and left my uncle — their son — to live with my grandfather’s mother so they could work more and save more money. I get stuck on how sad that must’ve been for my uncle, for everyone. She says he sent them letters and drawings, and tells me how much she’d missed her son then, how her heart broke to remember it, but how it had to be done. She tells me about hot dog carts outside their apartment window, about getting together with the other wives for coffee in the morning, the pizza place on the corner, the cold. Most of the wives just wanted to talk all day, but my grandmother had stuff to do; she didn’t have time for visiting and they drove her crazy wanting to gossip.
She says they moved back to Tennessee because my grandfather had wanted to come home. She’d wanted to be a stewardess and see the world; he’d wanted to make sure his mama was taken care of. She’d wanted to stay in Chicago and he’d wanted to come home, and she got tired of seeing him upset, so home they came. Right back where they started.
I will never come back to this place, I promise myself. Not even for my mama! Not for anybody.
If I ever get out, I’m staying out.
—1988
Friday, June 6
Sun Drop is a soda that you used to only be able to get in the south, and it is delicious. Think Mello Yello or Mountain Dew, but better and made with actual cane sugar and orange pulp. For whatever reason this drink is a big damn deal in Tennessee — like it’s up there with The Vols and country music and Jack Daniels (which coincidentally is what we added to our Sun Drops before high school football games). Even though you can buy it anywhere now, I still only drink Sun Drop when I go back to Tennessee, which means it’s a Really Big Deal and Highly Anticipated.
We were in rush hour traffic on the way home from the airport on Friday when we spotted this car with a Sun Drop can affixed to the bumper. We weren’t shocked or confused because this kind of homage to the soda made sense to us. Yes, Sun Drop is so good and important that this person has glued a can to their bumper and I support them. OK.
But really the guy had just forgotten about it and the can had managed to stay there through all that traffic. He hopped out and grabbed it a few minutes after Megan took this picture. This is a lot to say about a soda, but it’s really important to me that you know how our trip began.
Saturday, June 7
It rains in Tennessee. My parents’ house sits on top of a hill, and it rains in Tennessee. It had been raining for days before we got there and it would rain for days to come.
My grandmother Elsie was a fraternal twin born in the early 1930s, who hated her name because of the Borden cow. She was the first person in her family to graduate high school. She’d say, “Get an education because that’s something no one can take away from you.” I’d wonder why anyone would want to take away my education to begin with, but I felt like I understood her message.
My grandfather J.W. was also born in the early 1930s, and he’d rather prank you than cordially shake your hand. (He would cordially shake your hand, of course. He had manners.) You could tell when he was pulling your leg because his nostrils would flare a little and suddenly a lot of effort was going into pressing down the corners of his mouth and his top lip. He’d turn his head away just before caving in, “What?? HAHAha huh?! HAHA!”
It smells like deep wet dirt when it rains in southern Arizona, where I live now. It’s a genuinely wonderful smell, don’t get me wrong. In Tennessee, though, it smells like trees are taking a shower — only you have to imagine that you feel the same way toward trees as you do your girlfriend. So imagine the way it smells when she takes a shower, but with trees. It’s how I know I’m here and that gravity exists and people love me, because the rain in Tennessee has always smelled like trees taking a shower, and it always will. There’s also an ice cold winter smell that’s steeped in bacon grease and wet bark that I haven’t inhaled in years, but I still know it. I try to recreate it in Arizona but you can always smell the dirt here and it just isn’t the same.
Sunday, June 8
Parts of the town had flooded a few days before we arrived. People were calling City Hall to complain that their gravel driveways had been washed out, like the mayor himself had sent the rain to those driveways and therefore had the power to stop it and was also responsible for fixing the damage. My mother says everyone should have to work for the public at least once in their life, so they’d know what not to say to people like her, and when not to call. When your own personal driveway washes away in a flood, for example.
My mom and stepdad live on one of the highest points in the county, so flooding isn’t something they worry about — flooding just means that the pond at the bottom of the hill fills back up. Megan walked me over to listen to the frogs who’d made it their new home. We got down low and scooted as close to the cattails as we could without a) falling in or b) getting chiggers. Megan’s number one fear of the South is chiggers, even though I’ve yet to experience a chigger on my person in all 33 years of my life. After getting sufficiently frustrated by how good the frogs were at hiding — and despite the constant danger of chiggers — Megan agreed to walk with me along the tree line. This is where we accidentally happened upon something so perfect that I ran all the way back up the hill to get my camera, then ran all the way back down the hill to take a picture, and that perfect something was a happy little snail hanging out under a red capped mushroom.
Friends, it was like a vintage line of Hallmark stationery circa 1980 had sprung to life 10 inches from my feet. I mean it was all this girl could ask for.
Tuesday, June 10
I used a stick to scratch my initials into the wet cement at our house on the hill on Tuesday, March 3, 1992. Four years later my grandparents bought a few acres across the street and built their house in the woods. We’d walk across the road with casserole dishes. We shared a garden in our backyard and there was a bumper crop of zucchini. They argued over when the corn would be ready.
Three years after that, we brought Slade home from the hospital to my grandparents’ house dressed in a thick white jumpsuit covered in polar bears and snowflakes. The lacy bassinet was set up in the living room and one of the downstairs bedrooms had been opened up for us. Elsie made brown beans and cornbread for dinner and we realized sometime around 2am, after all three generations of women had taken turns rocking, walking, swaying and cuddling this crying newborn baby beast for five hours straight, that eating beans and then breastfeeding was maybe the worst idea any of us could’ve had. We spent the night in the dark living room — one of us in the rocking recliner, one of us in the oversized armchair, and the other on the sofa — them trading stories about their first days of motherhood and me listening, watching the snow fall and wondering how I would ever be good at this without them.
Their house in the woods is for sale now because both Elsie and J.W. have died, as people do. I thought I’d maybe try to be an adult about it this year because I certainly wasn’t last year. The house being for sale, I mean. That last song and dance.
There wasn’t room for anything in my mom’s fridge Tuesday night, so we drove our Bonnaroo drinks across the road to my grandparents’ empty fridge so everything would be chilled before we left for Manchester early Thursday morning. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to cry in their kitchen or like, wander around the house touching collectibles and flashing back to how my one year-old Slade used to eat bananas and ice cream in that chair in Elsie’s lap, or how J.W. would sing “wash your face and comb your hair and change your dirty underwear!” to him in the mornings.
Anyway that’s what the moon looked like on the night we walked out to the truck to fill an empty fridge with cheap beer and water bottles, before I let myself cry in their stupid kitchen and before anything, really. This was the part of the trip when you ring the doorbell and wait for someone to let you in. I mean we were still standing on the porch of our summer vacation.
We went to Walmart at least once a day, every day, except for the days when we were at Bonnaroo.
Thursday, June 11
Slade and I moved to Florida right after I graduated from high school. My mom and stepdad drove everything down and helped us set up our tiny apartment near the the St. Johns river. On the morning it was time for them to go, I sat with my mother on my bed and cried, “How could you just leave me here with these boys? I don’t even know what I’m doing!” and she cried and told me that I’d be ok, that I’d figure it out. It was the first time I’d freely admitted to being scared of anything since the time my dad had let me watch A Nightmare On Elm Street in first grade. She told me later that all she could stand to eat on the 14-hour drive back to Tennessee was a baked potato from Wendy’s.
I always wish my mom could come with us to Bonnaroo, but she’s not much of a camper. This year we made her promise that if Paul Simon is ever on the lineup, she’s getting a ticket.
From June 12-15 Megan and I camped and sweated and danced on the farm at Bonnaroo, which you can read/see about right here: Bonnaroo 2014: A Photo Diary From The Guts of a Real Person.
And then we came back.
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i really seriously love this and am totally not crying at work? anyway. <3
Love this x infinity.
laneia this is my favorite thing, you are my favorite thing
This is so lovely!
<3 <3 gaaahhh
This was so beautiful
I love this and I love that you really really know what and where home is
somehow my heart has found a way to ache for a home that doesnt exist in a place i have never been with a family i dont have and what a confusing way that is to feel. so yeah this broke my heart, but i mean that in the very best way possible because i loved every word.
<3
I’m so glad Carmen and I are both not crying. I’m also glad I waited to read this until I was alone because not-crying is less awkward when you can be alone with your not-tears and not-feelings.
Gorgeous words and photos and storytelling. You amaze me.
Wow this is very sweet and powerful. Made me think about home in a kinder way, especially while I’m (temporarily!!!) living here again. Also what are chiggers? Do I want to know???
chiggers are the worst avoid knowledge or interaction if at all possible
DDD:
what robin said! just don’t tell megan.
This is so important and magical.
guh, everything about this is beautifully crafted and makes me homesick for the South on a whole new level (Sun Drop + whiskey, sweetwater IPA, the whole lot)
!!!
i didn’t have a chance to talk about honeysuckles and coke + peanuts, but don’t think i’m not planning it eventually.
Reminds me a lot of how I define home too. ♡ beautifully written piece.
♡
well, lemme tell you something this is one of my favorite things I’ve ever read/seen/eaten on this here website of ours.
This:
“This is where I say that now I know — that it’s taken me 26 years but now I know that actually I would go back. I’d go back for backyard vegetable gardens and tree showers and weeknight dinners at my sister’s and beans on porches and I’d go back even for my Mama. I’d go back for me. And now I know what home is: it’s there. I admit it! I want to go home and I want that home to be Tennessee! I’m sorry for all the shit I said and for swearing I’d rather live in an RV than go back to that place. I miss you, Tennessee. I miss you and I want to come HOME.”
this is exactly how I’ve been feeling about Michigan (or really the midwest in general) these past few weeks, and it’s surprising how after just one conversation about going back to the midwest within the next few years and settling in there, i felt this sense of rightness and calm that no other idea about where to live next has ever made me feel. so let’s all go back and get land and visit each other all the time and we can drive we don’t even have to fly. we can just drive from porch to porch, our land to your land. a place becomes home whether you like it or not!
i love you so much.
This is beautiful.
Dear Laneia,
This is beautiful and you are beautiful.
Love,
Dina
i grew up in the foreign service and sometimes i feel like my home is everywhere and a lot of the time i feel like it’s nowhere but then a couple weeks ago i dropped everything and drove out to colorado and my heart started aching a little less and i think maybe right now home is here.
I saw this on my commute home, stopped at a park to to practically devour this slice of home you’ve shared with us (hello, peach everything). What a wonderful, beautiful, honest look at your heart and home, Laneia.
I have a weekend trip to Tennessee next month, and I had not been looking forward to it, but this is making me feel a lot more cheerful about it! It was a wonderful essay.
Wow. The timing of this is impeccable. I might stay away forever, but I can’t stop knowing the difference in the weight of the fortuitous and sad country crock containers. Or what real rain is. I’m not even from the south, just the diasporic microcosm of my grandparents house. Sigh. Thank you.
Peach ice cream will always remind me of visiting my grandma in Kentucky during summer. We would eat lots of it together and go to antique stores. At night we would eat popcorn and watch movies or talk. I especially loved when there were thunderstorms.
I love everything about this and you.
Also, a cat named Les Paw <3
SIGH. That was *quite* a last sentence!
This is so lovely. Just wonderful.
This is the perfect thing to read as I sit here, thousands of miles from anyone and anywhere I’ve ever called home. <3
This is beautiful and wonderful and perfect.
I can’t even put into words everything that this essay made me feel. From the very first photo to the second to last paragraph that made me start crying real hard, I recognized home in these beautiful words and pictures. I love Tennessee so much. I used to want to leave. I had dreams of California, Florida, Oregon. But the longer I’m here, the more I realize how incredibly hard it would be to leave home and how lucky I am to know exactly what and where “home” is. And that maybe, if I let it, someday Tennessee will love me back as much as I love it.
On a lighter note, Laneia, you are one lucky person to have grown up in Tennessee without a single chigger bite. Once, when I was a year or two old, my dad was doing yard work and set me down in the grass beside him as he trimmed the hedge. It was summer, so I was probably only wearing a diaper. My dad still to this day shudders to think about how mad my mom got when she found me covered in chigger bites from head to toe.
thank you so much, supportive lovely humans! writing this piece was like puking up my guts so i really appreciate that you’ve enjoyed it, and that you’ve taken the time to say so. really really really!
Oh my.
I have SO much to do today but I was just hypnotised by this piece and read it through twice. My clients can all just…wait. What a beautiful celebration of All The Tiny Things. The tree shower thing just made my heart swell up (and copy and post it to my partner…we have something similar here in the Pennines) and who knew there was a carpenter bee? Not me.
You’ve made me look around at my own life with fresh eyes Laneia – I’m planning a move right now and it’s so easy to lose sight of the million details that make up the daily life you take for granted. Then you leave and, perhaps years later, realise their meaning.
Thank you for puking up your beautiful guts for us xxxxxxxx
Thank you, Laneia. So, so beautiful. I tried to savor every word because I didn’t want it to end.
Well goddamnit Laneia
so.perfect.
This was beautiful. You are wonderful. <3
This is really fantastic. As everyone else has said, it is beautiful, you are beautiful and I really loved reading it today.
I keep coming back to read this and look at the pictures over and over again. This is so beautiful. I’ve never felt wanderlust about the South before, and this made me crave tree showers.
This also made me ache for a place to call home, which I haven’t found yet.
You’re incredible. <3
This is one of the best pieces I’ve ever read on this site.
Strange to feel nostalgic for I place I’ve never been.
Thank you.
i’ve come back to this several times already and i know i’ll come back to it again and again as i long for home and as i find it. it was beautiful / thank you.
also i find your habit of taking pictures of megan while she is sleeping and posting those pictures on autostraddle really amusing so keep up the good work w/r/t that.
This was so moving and great. I just spent a weekend in the wilderness which made me dearly homesick for the back roads, tree showers and mushroom forests of Michigan. I’m not quite ready to move back yet, but I’m sure I will some day.
I love this and the photos were beautiful.
This made me want to move back to Tennessee and I’ve never lived anywhere near it! Haha, but actually since I’ve reluctantly moved back to Phoenix I’ve been able to appreciate it so much more than I did when I was obsessed with living anywhere but here. That wet dirt rain is my youth, and release from that “dried up dusty broiling hell-oven on earth”. Anyway, thanks for the wonderful photos and writing and feels :)
I’m very glad that I finally set aside the time I wanted to give to this. This is very, very lovely, and beautifully put together. The second time I read it I got drawn deep into every word and picture and it felt like a great long cuddle to the heart, and the suspension of all else.
I’m so late to this beautiful party but I have to comment anyway. This is so beautiful. The “tree showers” part made my heart smile.
It also makes me really wish I could visit my grandparents house again. I can’t, because it was sold after they died almost 20 years ago, but I still remember exactly how it looked and all my favorite places in it – the crawl space under the basement stairs was the best hiding spot. I’d love to buy it someday, even though I know it won’t be the same. I forget my own previous addresses half the time but I’ll never forget theirs.
ANYWAY. I digress. Much much love.
i came back here to tell you how much i loved this piece
i read it at the airport right before a trip home
it was quite perfect
I’m late to the party, but bawling. I wish I could see it for myself, and hate being so far from my home, which also smells like a fresh and clean lover.
Goddamnit, this is beautiful. I found a little bit of home here.
I’ve always said I’m going to get the hell out of this little place in North Carolina sooner, rather than later. This reminded me that there are things I love about this place no matter how much I might want to distance myself sometimes.
Thanks. <3
Reading this for the first time on a night it feels difficult to be back home, and it’s reminding me of all the reasons I made the decision to move back here – that deep heartache I felt for autumn leaves, wood stoves, root cellars, red and black plaid wool shirts, and family despite having fallen in love with southern Arizona and the joy that only rain in the desert can bring. Thank you, thank you. Definitely not crying.
This piece made me feel ALL the feelings. All of them.
This was lovely and makes me think of Iowa. Thank you.
FEELINGS. TEARS. TOO MUCH FOR MONDAY MORNING.