Admitting That You’re Home: A Photo Diary

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18

lunch dates

place

drinks

There’s a restaurant in town with a truly obnoxious name that serves pretty solid food Wednesdays through Sundays. We met my mom for lunch and it was here, before locals and antiquing elderly and probably God himself, that Megan had her first chicken fried steak. I’m told it was life-changing.

cheese

puppy

counting

quiet

My dad remarried when I was five and they had their first daughter together when I was 10. I reached over the side of the plastic hospital bassinet to touch her inky little foot and imagined driving her around town in my convertible and putting her hair in side ponytails while she told me all of her secrets. When she was a toddler and we’d visit my dad’s side of the family for holidays, Leah would hang on me like a spider monkey. We’d sit together and read her Sesame Street books while our grandmother’s house buzzed with grownups and rowdy cousins. After a couple of years she’d be buzzing around with them and I’d be stuck answering awkward questions about school and my “social” life, but for a while there it was just me and her.

On Wednesday night Leah’s boyfriend Kyle grilled ribs and made his famous baked potatoes, which are not to be underestimated. I drank a Natty Light with dinner because why the hell not. He has two adorable daughters and they fell in love with Megan immediately, as one does. There were several games of hide-and-seek before and after dinner, and those girls are good at hide-and-seek.

be careful

One day I’ll talk about how it seems like everything in Tennessee is tied directly to a person who’s gone, and how that makes everything feel unreal and endless, but not today. Sometimes it’s like all I ever really talk about is dead people, even when I’m not trying to. My sisters and I have scoops of our hearts in little urns in our bedrooms. Leah has his art tattooed on her shoulder and Abby has this note he left her tattooed on her forearm. I have my deer. We all have each other.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6See entire article on one page

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Laneia

Laneia has written 311 articles for us.

55 Comments

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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???

  12. 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.

  15. 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.

  18. 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.

  19. 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.

  20. 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.

  21. 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.

  22. 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.

  26. This is the perfect thing to read as I sit here, thousands of miles from anyone and anywhere I’ve ever called home. <3

  28. 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.

  29. 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!

  30. 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

  35. This is really fantastic. As everyone else has said, it is beautiful, you are beautiful and I really loved reading it today.

  36. 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

  37. 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.

  38. 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.

  39. 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.

  41. 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 :)

  42. 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.

  43. 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.

  44. 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

  45. 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.

  46. 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

  47. 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.

Comments are closed.