The Dreaming Fields
Growing up, we often spent summers in southern Georgia -- Waycross, to be specific. My mom, Dottie, had grown up there, and it seemed that whenever someone got married or died, we'd return. That is, until I was old enough to protest, and stay on my own.During those early years, I felt incredibly connected to my southern relatives. They had big, friendly hearts and outgoing natures, but it was hard to see the connection between them and my often-rigid mother. Still, I felt close to them.Every trip, we would stay at Waycross' finest, the Holiday Inn, the lobby of which retained the faint hint of cigarette smoke, escaping through the cocktail lounge door. Aside from the pool, the motel also featured a putting green, where we kids would play for hours.I always noticed, though, the division that seemed to exist between black and white. There would be African Americans by the pool, or at the lake where we often had family functions, but it was almost as if I could tell they were eying us cautiously, making sure that neither side stepped over an invisible line into inappropriate behavior.There was something about the inhabitants of the south which I found intriguing, regardless of color. Something about their unhurried pace and languid tongue... The way the humidity didn't seem to bother them at all, while I, on the other hand, almost felt as if I were suffocating.
My cousins were much more adventurous than me, always up for a game of hide and seek, or an outing, or -- as we got older -- spin the bottle. And I'll never forget how dumb I was, falling for their Snipe hunt.In my memories, I think of red dirt forever clinging to my tennis shoes, running through the endless fields, riding the lawnmower, boat trips through the Okefenokee swamp, and my granny's house, with the never-used living room filled with ceramic figurines. There was one memorable summer day, spent at my Aunt Patsy's, where we kids hid in the corn silo and had a spectacular barbeque, with the most magnificent homemade, fresh peach ice cream.I remember the stately and slightly creepy mansion of Miss Myrtis Beach, just down from the house at 501 Lee, where my mother was born. The old white Victorian of Carter's Boardinghouse, with their terrific southern food, bottles of sugar cane syrup on the tables, and swarms of flies. And the facade of the long-closed pharmacy and soda fountain, which my granny had run, years before women were supposed to run anything.So much of that era is gone now, replaced by WalMart and the newer shops on the outlying highways. And I'm sad to see it go. But today's world offers us many advances, and connecting with my relatives through Facebook has lead to closer relationships than I ever had before, despite the years and miles.Still, those days of old echo through my dreams, and I can't help but feel, as they pass, that a part of me is going with them.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IesMaIMN09M