A Short Visit to Reflect

I visited the South for the second time since I moved to Boston. It was a four-day trip that had me flying into Atlanta, then driving a rental car to Nashville and flying back out of Atlanta again. I hadn't planned on going to Nashville, but my parents insisted I see their new house in Hillsboro. It's beautiful, and much, so much better, than the house I fled from as a teen. There's even space for me to sleep when I visit. There's room for me in my family again, which is odd, but nice. This year, my whole family has changed from blue collar to white collar, complete with house change and a slight shift in political beliefs. It's just to wild to talk about right now.

Several things struck me about the South this trip back: first, the thick wet warm air seemed to hug me back. Second, every thing was so dark green, steaming in the August heat and growing so fast you could almost hear the plants pushing upward. Third, everything was spread so far out. Atlanta is one big sprawl of a town without much rhyme or reason to its layout. I could never live carless in the South as I do here, and all the driving eats up your time. Fourth, I miss hanging out with a lot of people, but I'm not so sure I'm ready to move back just yet.

I went on this trip to see my cousin Audrey get married. I didn't see much of her because she was busy, but that's Okay - I'm going to write her a long letter later on this week. Most of the weekend I spent with my younger sisters and the three babies that were around my Aunt and Uncle's house. Their names were Ruel, Colin, and Elenore. Ruel is almost 3, Colin nearly 2 and Ellie 3 or 4 months. They were all pretty entertaining, as were my two sisters, Abigail and Sara. Sara had her 14th birthday and first drink at the wedding. My Parents and Grandparents were around, and everyone behaved well, which was nice. I stayed just outside of Atlanta with my Uncle Doug and Aunt Laura, and I've always found their house to be calming.

My dad was in a pretty bad car wreck this summer and got knocked on the head. It was good to see he was mostly better, and I cut his hair before the wedding, looking carefully for any scars. Internal injuries are bizarre. He looked fine, but a lot of his muscles are ripped up in his back still. I knew that his head was mostly better, but there were no outward signs that anything had happened to his noggin at all, despite the severity of the injury.

I fought with myself a lot about deciding to move. I think Savannah would be best for me when I go, because it's close to everyone but would give me my own space. At the same time, I don't feel like I've investigated living in Atlanta enough. It's so beautiful, but there were smog warnings both Friday and Saturday, as a thick haze hung over the city. You don't see that here in Boston, but then, we're on the coast, and get a regular breeze.

One of the most exciting things I did was go to the dollar store in Nashville with my mom. I never thought a dollar store could be so exciting, before I moved to a city where NOTHING was a dollar, suddenly *everything* that's a dollar gets pretty intoxicating. I spent $5 on an exacto knife, a ruler set, a cutting board, a box of straight pins, and a triple pack of water guns. I think in Boston all these things together would have run about $20 easily. So the dollar store was an extra special treat.

Nashville was Nashville. It's not that I mind the city so much, just that living there would feel like going backward for me. Also, I find Tennessee's politics annoying on many levels. I'm not from there, so I fail to understand why people get into dilemmas about gambling or alcohol and it irritates me that there are vast stretches of the state where people could care less about trying to reform their educational system. There are things in Georgia that annoy me too, but on the whole it's at least several shades more liberal than Tennessee, and I'm from there so I 'get' it.

The wedding was huge and fabulous. I'm beginning to suspect that weddings at night are more fun than weddings during the day. The church was well designed for big gatherings, and even had a day care room for those too small to sit quietly through the service. After the ceremony in the chapel we went down a hallway to a large banquet hall with a dance floor. Along one wall was a large buffet, and before the procession was introduced into the banquet hall, people were all ready lining up and picking off of it.

The caterer was annoyed. "The Bride and Groom are supposed to see the food first", he said, clearly thinking that everyone would sit down at the round tables around the room and wait for officials to let us know when it was Okay to eat.

Someone clued him in that things didn't work that way in our family. He couldn't have stopped the people anyway; there were at least a hundred there, and he was overwhelmed. I got to eat mini quiches, so I was happy. I know you can buy mini quiches at the store, but it's not the same as getting them from receptions. I'm not quite sure why.