Tide

My Mother loved to tell me the story of her birth — more precisely — her birthplace. She was born in her mother and father’s small home on what would later become a part of the campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa , Alabama. My grandfather was a native Tuscaloosan, my grandmother was a transplant from Monroe County, Alabama.

And so it began. My Mother became a Crimson Tide fan for life. And I became a fan by association. Roll Damn Tide.

It has been five months since my Mother’s death, two months since her memorial service at sea, and eight months since my reentry into my life and her native soil of Alabama.

Mind you, though I was raised to hold the Crimson Tide and Alabama as a sacrosant place, it was more conceptual than lived. Mom’s stories of childhood country adventures with her bosom friend ‘ Juice Ann’, her horse-back riding “Aunt” Big, and the mysterious family relations that eventually forged the path north (to St. Louis) for her.

I grew up an Army brat — born in Fort Irwin , CA, then on to Stuittgart , Germany, then Fort Benning , GA, then San Bernardino , CA (Norton AFB). My adulthood has been spent in the west — Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota. I have loved all of those places, save the last — South Dakota. That was the state where I went to build a life and validate a marriage that did not survive the harsh South Dakota winter and the harsher fact of incompatability .

Alone, in South Dakota, I was faced with the dilemma of ‘where’. A soon-to-be-single woman, empty-nester, employable in at least 15 states as a licensed pharmacist. The roulette wheel of ‘where’ was top of mind and overwhelming. I parsed my feelings of fatigue and wanderlust commingled with the practicalities of my 15 states of possibilities.

More and more , Alabama floated up from the miasma of indecision. I had recently visited to finalize my pharmacist licensure. The food was amazing — no burger and fries fallback necessary. The people looked like me — brown and black and all of the shades in between. People spoke to you on the streets — I was taken aback by a Black man looking me in the eyes and saying ‘Good Afternoon’ to me as I walked through downtown Birmingham. Not an everyday occurrence in South Dakota to be sure. And did I mention the food was amazing ?

I announced my decision to close friends and family — and was met with stunned silence, outright WTF, and a few ‘um, ok’. Then I was warned about the danger — racist white people were everywhere in Alabama, I was setting myself up to be robbed, shot, etc. People in Alabama , i.e. southerners, were not very intelligent.

Honestly, I was surprised by those resonses. And mystified. All of those descriptors could apply to any people living ANYWHERE in the US. Better to go out in a blaze of glory with a full, satisfied palate.

It is August in the countryside around Montgomery where I have just moved into the home I bought on the banks of the Alabama river. I wake up to a view from my bedroom window that touts the river bank opposite, lush green trees, and river birds that glide across the still surface or stalk fish in the shallows.

Driving out to see my home for the first time I was almost overwhelmed by the lush greeness of it all, thick stands of forests that seemed to swallow my car as I drove. Old, decrepit wooden warehouses and barns overgrown by vines and weeds that were creepy and sad and emblematic of a time not so far in the past. Structures that would have been new in my Mother’s childhood. I was far from the dry, sere mountain vistas of Colorado and Wyoming.

But the house felt right. Not too big or small, with enough land around it to make neighbors on either side bearable. My new life was reaching out to embrace my old life and let me settle in peace. New things await me everyday. And the past — the past of my ancestors and my family are everywhere to be found and re-discovered.

I have reentered the country of my Mother’s childhood, and reentered my own life. I am home.