Back to my roots....

Well I haven’t blogged in a while but it is never because I am not pondering or pursuing, or having predicaments for that matter.  Sometimes it just takes some time for the right moment and the clarity to sit and write.  We are going to the farm today and it brings me such peace.  I never fully appreciated this place as a child.  In fact, my mother always made me promise that when I grew up I would move away from the farm.  It was the worst and the best advice she ever gave me.   Cary and I lived there for our first 2 years of marriage, but left 10 years ago and have been chasing our careers since.  I needed 10 years away.  I needed to experience new things and new people.  I now have really great friends who live across the country, and even in Japan.  They are from different cultures and backgrounds and standards and religions and diets.  It is through understanding their experiences that I have evolved into the person I am.  We have traveled to many states and a few different countries.  I love experiencing other cultures.  It is truly profound to me to consider all of the immense differences and yet the very basic similarities of the world.  I think and I hope that these experiences have made me more tolerant and more temperate towards others.  They have certainly changed the person that I am. 

We have, on a couple of occasions, considered moving to another state.  I suppose we could go anywhere on earth we wanted.   I can’t imagine so fully immersing myself in another culture this way.  I know that southerners aren’t always respected in other places.  I wonder how I would be accepted.  Would people ridicule my accent?  Would they appreciate me as a person, or just assume I were an ignorant country girl?   How would I fit in?  How much would I miss Tennessee’s rolling hills and green grass and my family and… my roots?

My granddad relays the story his grandmother told of her family’s voyage here from Ireland when she was a small girl.  They landed in Charleston, SC, floated on a raft down the river, got off in Memphis and walked back towards the east to finally settle just a few miles from the family farm today.  I am so lucky to still have my grandparents to share these stories.   My grandparents still own the farms where they were raised in addition to the farm they bought when they were married.  On my grandmothers family’s farm, there still stands the old hand hewn log house that was built by her great grandfather.  The house is old and very dilapidated now.  We were able to use some of these logs in the construction of our cabin.  It is special to me to have something so authentic.  It was hewn by the hands of my ancestors and now is a part of our home.  There is the old white farmhouse that Cary and I lived in when we got married on my grandfather’s family farm.  These are such invaluable gems to me.

While I will always have a spirit for experiencing new cultures, at the end of the day my roots are firm and strong.  I am a southern girl.  I love my heritage and I have a deep yearning to get closer to that from whence I came.  While I think we have certainly made amazing strides as a civilization, some we should not be so proud of.  Some things were better before we went and messed them up.   Some things I would prefer to do the old fashioned way.  It is why I love gardening and patty pan squash ; )  It is why I am committed to organics. 

 It is why we are now planning to move back to the farm.  Our plan is to try to move in the spring 2 years from now.  The land is beyond beautiful with fields of green grass, rolling hills and woods of tall oak and maple trees.  The pace is slower.  The work is more physical.  The people are honest.  There is a goodness that I want to come home to. 

I know that in many ways I am idealizing life on the farm.  I have seen my dad work many hard and long hours in the baking sun.  The commute will be grueling.  We have certainly grown accustomed to the conveniences of living in town.  But, I cannot wait!  We are visiting more frequently these days.  We are hearing old stories and taking tours around the farm and eating grandmothers cooking and sitting on the front porch and dreaming…. And it all has a deeper meaning than I have ever known before.           


                    

I know that I am not the same girl who left there 10 years ago.  I have gotten faster and tougher and more jaded, but I have also gotten more compassionate, more respectful and more mature.  I am more educated, less religious and have taken on some new-fangled ways.  And now, I am wondering how I will be accepted.   Will people make fun of my ways?  Will they appreciate me as a person or just assume I am an ignorant city girl?  Cary says I am Jerry Sullivan’s daughter and that is all the credibility I need.  While I can't wait to find out, I am sure hoping he is right…