ThomasWolfe's final novel (title) is one of the most misquoted phrases in American English..."You can't go home again!" Physically..... the words are probably a profound truth but emotionally...that single phrase is the biggest lie perpetrated on generations of readers. How so?
Home, for me, is the holler (hollow to you non Appalachian language purists) in a small western West Virginia town, the same town my great-grandparents settled in nearly 150 years ago , the head of the holler once exclusively owned by family members...a place where many family now sleep in eternal rest. I grew up in that holler...running the surrounding hills accompanied by the beagles that my father raised and the black collie that my uncle brought home one day. For almost the first two decades of my life, I waded the creeks to catch crawdads, picked buckets of wild strawberries, blackberries and dewberries to carry home to my grandmother, cut and picked flowers to lay on my mother's grave, watched the turn in the road for visiting relatives, and daydreamed about the world outside...a world I knew only from books and my father's collection of National Geographic magazine.
By the time I finally went to school (at 11 after the Brown vs. Topeka Supreme Court decision), the mile and a half hike out of the holler was a respite from the drunken shaving strap wielding rampages of my stepmother because by then I was old enough to take charge of my own well being. The day I emancipated myself was the day she swung the shaving strap at me and I caught it in mid strike with the admonition that she would never in life hit me again...I was taller than she was, weighed more than she did and could outrun her. I walked out of the house and went the 75 yards down the hill to my octogenarian grandparents house......HOME. I thank GOD every day for that home...a place of peace and safety..and a place where I could find answers or a path to answers for the questions of my heart.
With the support of my mother's family, the next five and a half years were survivable. My grandfather "schooled" me on family history and mountain "smarts". I learned to make a flute from a branch of a pawpaw tree. how to scout out the root of a sassafras tree (to dry for tea in winter) and how to make a "hotbed" for growing tomato plants for planting in May and how to straw late growing tomato plants (the runts of his hotbed) so we had fresh tomatoes on Thanksgiving day. Through his eyes I learned to watch my environment for weather changes and what to do for "swimming in the head." Had my grandmother not been blind...there was much more I could have learned from her. Her important lessons focused on the value of "FAMILY" and traditions and maintaining the "ties that bind" families (and communities) together.
My senior year in high school was challenging in personal ways. My father had a massive heart attack and nearly died, his best friend (my mother's younger brother) died suddenly of pancreatic cancer and my mother's older brother was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The family tried to shelter me from the storms that were gathering on the horizon because they wanted my focus on graduation and getting into college. No distractions would be permitted. For nearly two months I struggled trying to complete my college application. Each version was rejected by my stepmother (my father..who was now retired and at home...trusted her judgement). Finally I voiced my frustration to my grandfather and my uncle because my stepmother refused to mail my application because it "wasn't right.) Grampa had the solution...get another copy of the application...fill it out and mail it! His pronouncement finished with "Do it now!" I did exactly that and Grampa handed me the application fee. A month later I was headed out of the holler into town and met my father. he had one question...had I finished the application to my stepmother's satisfaction? To my NO answer came the question..what was I going to do ? I looked at him and said..."Nothing" and pulled the acceptance letter from my pocket and handed it to him. In essence I told him that I had gotten tired of being told that what I wrote was not good enough...so I did it on my own. He folded the letter, put it in his pocket and told me he would give Grampa back his money. He walked home and I went on to town.
Three weeks after my 18th birthday....I left HOME. Unforeseen (to me) many changes were in the wind. Home was fast moving from a physical place to a place I could only visit in my memories.
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