Moving the blog over to WordPress.
http://outsideandrea.wordpress.com/
please come on by!
16 March 2010
13 January 2010
stuck in the middle
monday night during a thai dinner with friends, i found myself in a situation that i last specifically remember from seventh grade.
the long table held at least 11 people. i sat in the very middle, with a few people to either side and a few across the way. now, to understand me, you have to be aware that many times i choose not to participate in conversation when more than one other person is involved. i prefer to watch and listen. (and provide gratuitous laughter and smiles.)
my elbow on the table, i leaned to the left to have full view of two boys as they throw ideas at each other (and sometimes at me) about frying un-fry-able foods. theirs are the most animated faces at the table, as usual. every so often the neighbor to my left sends over these maniacal grins, eyebrows as high as they can stand, keeping me in the loop.
then suddenly a sound behind me catches my attention. i do an about-face to set my left elbow on the table. three suave friends discuss smoking somethingorother, my attention is grabbed--what could possibly make you feel like you're in an alternate universe, seeing everything for the first time?
but the yelling from the other side grabs me and turns me around. this time it's something about an icemaker.
what now? to the right someone's talking about england.
and god forbid i hear a snippet of conversation from across the table! a dropped class, a cookbook, a beer.
a brief conversation with the right-hand friend. knitting. something i am genuinely interested in. but i cannot speak for all the words i hear moving past my ears from every direction!
the long table held at least 11 people. i sat in the very middle, with a few people to either side and a few across the way. now, to understand me, you have to be aware that many times i choose not to participate in conversation when more than one other person is involved. i prefer to watch and listen. (and provide gratuitous laughter and smiles.)
my elbow on the table, i leaned to the left to have full view of two boys as they throw ideas at each other (and sometimes at me) about frying un-fry-able foods. theirs are the most animated faces at the table, as usual. every so often the neighbor to my left sends over these maniacal grins, eyebrows as high as they can stand, keeping me in the loop.
then suddenly a sound behind me catches my attention. i do an about-face to set my left elbow on the table. three suave friends discuss smoking somethingorother, my attention is grabbed--what could possibly make you feel like you're in an alternate universe, seeing everything for the first time?
but the yelling from the other side grabs me and turns me around. this time it's something about an icemaker.
what now? to the right someone's talking about england.
and god forbid i hear a snippet of conversation from across the table! a dropped class, a cookbook, a beer.
a brief conversation with the right-hand friend. knitting. something i am genuinely interested in. but i cannot speak for all the words i hear moving past my ears from every direction!
17 December 2009
Remembering you.
This song makes me cry like a baby.
We all lose friends and loves and family, whether to death or growing up, growing apart or moving on. It's so comforting yet painful to remember times with those people in those old places. People who have changed my life never seem to lose their details.
22 September 2009
Birds? Bats?
23 August 2009
The Alabama grass buzzes with the hum of Alabama bugs, soft, sweet and reassuring. It’s never silent here.
Sensing the last thread of gold sunset peeking over the trees, I glance up from my paperback to observe the best moments of the day while noticing the muffled conversation of the three white twenty-somethings sitting behind me.
As a black couple in loud yet unobtrusive conversation passes, black dots flit through my line of vision. Their erratic motions indicate that suppertime has finally come. Dusk.
--
My family and I wait patiently and silently for the waiter to bring a few glasses of beer to the patio table we’ve claimed. We have exhausted all points of conversation after being each other’s only company for the past week. We are silent but content. Our eyes wander but we are not bored.
My eyes erratically follow the flight of a thousand black dots, birds. Where their paths intersect I guess which way to swing my gaze and most of the time assume that I have made the correct judgment. I am watching the same bird as I was just a second ago.
So this is Spain.
The Alabama grass buzzes with the hum of Alabama bugs, soft, sweet and reassuring. It’s never silent here.
Sensing the last thread of gold sunset peeking over the trees, I glance up from my paperback to observe the best moments of the day while noticing the muffled conversation of the three white twenty-somethings sitting behind me.
As a black couple in loud yet unobtrusive conversation passes, black dots flit through my line of vision. Their erratic motions indicate that suppertime has finally come. Dusk.
--
My family and I wait patiently and silently for the waiter to bring a few glasses of beer to the patio table we’ve claimed. We have exhausted all points of conversation after being each other’s only company for the past week. We are silent but content. Our eyes wander but we are not bored.
My eyes erratically follow the flight of a thousand black dots, birds. Where their paths intersect I guess which way to swing my gaze and most of the time assume that I have made the correct judgment. I am watching the same bird as I was just a second ago.
So this is Spain.
20 July 2009
cafe con letras
One year ago I began the day with a percolator full of coffee—a real rarity in Chile—and a cramped 20-minute microbus ride to Valparaiso, across the harbor from Vina del Mar.
My aquamarine Converse tread down the stairs and out the front gate of my apartment complex, down Calle 8 Norte and a couple blocks south on Libertad, paused at the bus stop and vaulted me up the few steep stairs onto the micro.
Here they paused as I handed the driver 250 pesos in return for a stamp-sized orange-and-white slip of paper which proclaimed Puerto, port. My shoes tapped the ground on beat with the hum of the street in friction with the tires of the micro as my eyes flickered between passengers and the window to my right.
These eyes only wished to see the water’s reflection of the cloud-covered sky over the concrete of the highway. My feet got to tapping harder and faster as they anticipated touching the sidewalk under the overpass on Errazuriz and dodging piles of dog shit in the street.
---
Walking down Second Avenue North of Birmingham, Alabama, my sandals stall and fumble as my brain fools me into thinking that a crumpled-up leaf holds the same properties as a steaming pile of poop. But alas, poop cannot blow away with the wind.
My aquamarine Converse tread down the stairs and out the front gate of my apartment complex, down Calle 8 Norte and a couple blocks south on Libertad, paused at the bus stop and vaulted me up the few steep stairs onto the micro.
Here they paused as I handed the driver 250 pesos in return for a stamp-sized orange-and-white slip of paper which proclaimed Puerto, port. My shoes tapped the ground on beat with the hum of the street in friction with the tires of the micro as my eyes flickered between passengers and the window to my right.
These eyes only wished to see the water’s reflection of the cloud-covered sky over the concrete of the highway. My feet got to tapping harder and faster as they anticipated touching the sidewalk under the overpass on Errazuriz and dodging piles of dog shit in the street.
---
Walking down Second Avenue North of Birmingham, Alabama, my sandals stall and fumble as my brain fools me into thinking that a crumpled-up leaf holds the same properties as a steaming pile of poop. But alas, poop cannot blow away with the wind.
22 June 2009
una pausita
how is it possible that it has been more than a month since my last post?
how can it be that this year is nearly half over? it's incredible how quickly time goes by as we're just doing our thing.
since my last post, i have moved, graduated, been to spain, been to tuscaloosa, devoured a few books, vacationed, gotten asthma and made beet-blueberry pancakes. things are going well.
perhaps sometime soon i will divulge details.
how can it be that this year is nearly half over? it's incredible how quickly time goes by as we're just doing our thing.
since my last post, i have moved, graduated, been to spain, been to tuscaloosa, devoured a few books, vacationed, gotten asthma and made beet-blueberry pancakes. things are going well.
perhaps sometime soon i will divulge details.
14 May 2009
the lovely lady camper
i drove Pea Soup Green last weekend. my first stick ever! and we popped up the camper top to check it out...
the pancake tour is going to be spectacular!
the pancake tour is going to be spectacular!
12 May 2009
A Change of Heart--or, a bit of myself
A few weeks into the quarter, I mentioned something about home to my Spanish class partner at Western Washington University. Stunned with disbelief, he cocked his head and squinted his eyes. “You’re from Alabama?” he asked. Yes Jon, I explained, I thought you knew that.
His reply: “But you don’t have a Southern accent. You’re really from Alabama?”
If only Jon had known that my father eats fried okra and tater tots every night with dinner and shoots squirrels with a bb gun when they try to eat from his bird feeders, he would believe that I am from Alabama. If only he could have heard my grandmother yell from across the kitchen, “Grahb thaht big set ‘ah silverwahre from the top dra’er of the cab’net,” he would know.
As kids my sister and I went to Sunday school most weekends. Once I wore pants to church and the next week the preacher followed with a sermon about appropriate dress for church—and in the Church of Christ, pants don’t cut it. My father is a Rush Limbaugh fan through and through. I can’t talk politics with him, and neither can my conservative mother, if that provides any indication of the intensity of his far-right views.
I haven’t always appreciated my family’s banter about conservative politics and that morning’s sermon, but the food of Sunday lunch at Grandmother’s house provokes a reverent gratitude in me for Southern cooking. After the women in the house finally round up the men and children, everyone waits expectantly in the kitchen, surrounding the peninsula of counter where our feast awaits.
Uncle Mike resolutely thanks the Lord for our meal and the time we have to spend with our family. With head still bowed, I sneak a glance around the kitchen, filled with food and closed eyes. My family forms a semi-circle around a conglomeration of corn bread, Popeye’s fried chicken, mashed potatoes, collards, and macaroni and cheese.
***
“Oh, and of course we’ll have macaroni and cheese, it’s Andrea’s favorite,” Grandmother says every year when she makes that round of phone calls, polling to find out what everyone wants to eat for Thanksgiving dinner. Since I was little and discovered my magical relationship with my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese, there has never been a question about whether or not we’ll be having it, no matter if we’re talking Sunday lunch or Christmas dinner.
Realizing my Southern nature has not been as easy for me as my love for elbow noodles baked in milk and sharp cheddar cheese. Maybe it’s due to the fact that I never developed a Southern accent, the most obvious giveaway. But never have I wanted to go huntin’ or muddin’ and the thought of watchin’ football all day every Saturday makes me cringe. I’m not a “Southern belle” by any means. By most observable measurements, I am an outsider in my own element.
I yearned to get away from the sterile South, where I refused to return frat boys’ cries of “ROLL TIDE,” especially during football season. How could I support Bryant-Denny Stadium’s current role as Number One on the campus map? Number one at an institution of learning should be the library, not the football stadium.
I was tired of judgmental looks from all these religious people who might think that I was going to hell because the curvature of my breasts was readily seen through my shirt and not the foam cups of a Wonderbra.
So I left. Instead of limiting myself within the bounds of Alabama interstates, I flew north to Boston, west to Washington, south to Chile and east to Europe.
***
When I was a kid, before dreams of exotic locales had itched their way into my head, I could always tell hours in advance if we’d be having moussaka for dinner. The heavy smell of Fry-Daddy oil crept past the slate-tiled entryway like the angel of death in the movie The Ten Commandments, even down into the basement. I’d see my mother through the kitchen door, dutifully slicing potatoes. While she sliced and fried, the granite countertop pressed hard against my chest as I stepped up on tippy-toes in order to have a clearer view of the golden fried potatoes that represented my mother’s Albanian blood. I could eat the thin, crunchy chips as soon as my mom salted them and they cooled off a bit.
In those days, when I was too young to care much about the concept of heritage, the homemade potato chips meant only a surprise snack before dinner. But a couple years later, while visiting my mom’s family in Boston, my aunts decided that my cousin Marielle and I would participate in the city’s annual cultural parade. My aunt and uncle brought the two of us to the Albanian Orthodox church. We ransacked a closet full of traditional Albanian clothing and upon exiting the church, the cool breeze ruffled the white cotton of my peasant shirt against my arms.
Marielle and I displayed the full-sized flag of the country of our grandparents with ardor, as the full-blooded grownup Albanians danced and beat tambourines.
Later that night, with the sweat of Boston summers still crystallized on our skin, my mom and Xaxi (Uncle) Johnny told us stories about their post-college trip to Albania, about meeting the family we still have there. My uncle pulled out a photo of my mom wearing a white cotton dress, standing in front of an ivy-encased stone doorway somewhere in rural Albania. The photo still haunts my thoughts from time to time. There was something magical about that ivy and that dress, something that I have not stopped wishing for since I saw them.
***
The entirety of my fanatical Albanian family gathered on the expanse of my Xaxi Peter’s back porch. A couple hundred meters away, clouds and the waters of Buzzard’s Bay morphed into one grey being; a foxtail of grass lined by forest follows behind, all the way to the house. Each of my three cousins, two aunts, two uncles, Nena, parents, and my sister had thrown on salmon pink shirts that proclaimed “Camp Lakror 2005” in tiny white letters.
The wine glasses in everyone’s hands trembled. The shish kabob was almost finished grilling. Five minutes later, as my uncle lifted the lid, he proclaimed “Opa!” and raised the spear of lamb meat above his head. Laughing, my mom and Xaxi Johnny joined him in a dance, complete with butcher knives, and followed the shish kabob inside with smiling teeth and knives flashing toward the night sky.
My tiny Nena, who has shrunk so much she’s now a whole head shorter than me, delights in the antics of her three children. It doesn’t take them much to convince her to spend a few hours making a lakror, a traditional Albanian spinach pie. She is the only person left in the United States who makes lakror the right way, or so my mom says. Nena has been making the dish for decades and my family treats it like gold.
I, on the other hand, am still trying to condition myself to like the stuff. No matter how zealously I try, I can’t manage to eat a whole piece. Something about the creamy, soft filling throws me off every time, but the crust is something so wonderful that it’s almost intangible. Perfectly browned and bigger than an extra large pizza pie, a lakror is truly a beautiful thing.
My fifteen-year-old self thought that somehow, if I could convince myself to enjoy eating lakror, my Albanian half would develop and I would no longer be behind the curve of my Boston cousins, who were much more steeped in that culture. There is no Albanian population in Alabama, so my sister and I are more or less stuck with what little our mom tells us about her heritage.
It seemed so exciting to be from a different country or to have an exotic lineage to explore.
***
I made a pact with myself that if the opportunity arose for me to go someplace new, especially someplace international, I would take it. In the three years since I turned 20, I’ve traveled to six foreign countries and a handful of U.S. cities. Pieces of my heart are scattered globally, as I fell in love with certain aspects of each place.
In the northwest corner of the Northwest, Bellingham, Washington, I walked to school through a temperate rainforest for three months. Rounding a corner of the path, I’d come to a certain area where I liked to think fairies lived. Tiny bright green leaves surrounded the place, their spidery branches extending into the path where my fingers reached out toward them, gently brushing dew off them in the morning mist. The seemingly omnipresent clouds overcast the sun and made every shade of green infinitely more vibrant.
There is a staggering amount of art in Valparaíso, Chile; it is clear that Valpo is a city of creators, no matter where you look. One example is the ex-Cárcel, the ex-prison of the city; this building that witnessed a 20th-century dictatorship has been converted into a haven of paintings and sculptures. Ideas akin to the one that created the ex-Cárcel fill the soul of Valparaíso like the vagabundos—the homeless—fill the bellies of stray dogs with the food they acquire.
***
Friends and acquaintances express from time to time their jealousy of my travels, but really the thing I’ve come to value aren’t the things I’ve found in other places. I have learned to appreciate home. Maybe instead of exploring the surfaces of other cultures, I should probe deeper into my own to find subcultures within that ever-stereotyped group of Southerners. Knowing my own culture, the one I’ve been halfway ashamed to embrace for my whole life, might help me to better understand the others.
Perhaps the twenties are the point in life when this generally happens for everyone, but I think for sure that my generation—the people who have felt the United States had so many problems—we are changing our minds and realizing our love for this country and for Alabama. We don’t desire to flee when we see something we don’t like, but to make it better.
***
“You know, I can’t believe you just said that,” I whispered, cocking my head to the side a bit.
“Well, it’s true. The United States is the best country in the world,” Allen repeated. Four years age he had chosen to attend college in Canada because he was so frustrated with what he saw happening in the U.S. Now, sitting in a Birmingham bar, I stared at him incredulously through cans and glasses of beer.
“I’m tired of Vancouver,” he went on. “The people are flaky and they’re just not real. I’m ready to move back to the South. People here are friendly. They’ll help you out in a bind. They’ll call you ‘baby’ even when they don’t know your name and they’ll always ask you how you’re doin’ and at least pretend like they care.
“Just notice the undeniable beauty of the trees here,” he continued. “People appreciate people. There are so many good things about the South and about Alabama. People just don’t look for them.”
After a few minutes I’d finished my beer. When I returned from buying another round, I found Allen absorbed in conversation with the man who’d been sitting caddy-corner to our table. I wondered if they were kin until they asked each other’s names.
***
In previous years it seemed so much more exciting to be from some other country—any other country. Now I am proud of where I come from, proud to be from Alabama, the South, the United States. Maybe this change in attitude comes with travel and experience, actually seeing other countries, even seeing other parts of my own country. Maybe it’s because no matter where I’ve gone, I always hear “Sweet Home Alabama” and everyone knows and loves Forrest Gump.
It took me until my twenty-second year to appreciate my upbringing and my own culture; I had been stuck somewhere between desiring the city life of Boston or the exotic life of a rainforest hut, wishing for one extreme or the other.
***
I saw only one University of Alabama T-shirt during the three months I lived in the Northwest. Crimson flashed before me as I rounded an aisle at the grocery store. Elated to see one small fragment of home, I extended a friendly “Roll Tide” to the young man. All I received was an inquisitive stare from him and a twinge of disappointment.
In December, stuck in the Seattle airport waiting on stormy weather to subside, I was surrounded by a sea of bright red T-shirts and strong Southern drawls. These forty-odd Alabamians who had just finished an Alaskan cruise were an early re-entry reminder, forcing me to “enter” the South about eight hours earlier than I had anticipated. Though I cringed a bit at their loud “y’all”s, I was secretly glad to be surrounded by strangers who instantly felt like family.
***
Two and a half years later, the turbulence on a plane home from France made the passengers audibly nervous. At least once a collective pseudo-calm, quiet gasp escaped from several people in unison. After being away for two weeks, I was not happy about the apparent possibility of death before I set foot in my homeland. For perhaps too long, I thought about how much I would like to kiss the ground when we landed.
His reply: “But you don’t have a Southern accent. You’re really from Alabama?”
If only Jon had known that my father eats fried okra and tater tots every night with dinner and shoots squirrels with a bb gun when they try to eat from his bird feeders, he would believe that I am from Alabama. If only he could have heard my grandmother yell from across the kitchen, “Grahb thaht big set ‘ah silverwahre from the top dra’er of the cab’net,” he would know.
As kids my sister and I went to Sunday school most weekends. Once I wore pants to church and the next week the preacher followed with a sermon about appropriate dress for church—and in the Church of Christ, pants don’t cut it. My father is a Rush Limbaugh fan through and through. I can’t talk politics with him, and neither can my conservative mother, if that provides any indication of the intensity of his far-right views.
I haven’t always appreciated my family’s banter about conservative politics and that morning’s sermon, but the food of Sunday lunch at Grandmother’s house provokes a reverent gratitude in me for Southern cooking. After the women in the house finally round up the men and children, everyone waits expectantly in the kitchen, surrounding the peninsula of counter where our feast awaits.
Uncle Mike resolutely thanks the Lord for our meal and the time we have to spend with our family. With head still bowed, I sneak a glance around the kitchen, filled with food and closed eyes. My family forms a semi-circle around a conglomeration of corn bread, Popeye’s fried chicken, mashed potatoes, collards, and macaroni and cheese.
***
“Oh, and of course we’ll have macaroni and cheese, it’s Andrea’s favorite,” Grandmother says every year when she makes that round of phone calls, polling to find out what everyone wants to eat for Thanksgiving dinner. Since I was little and discovered my magical relationship with my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese, there has never been a question about whether or not we’ll be having it, no matter if we’re talking Sunday lunch or Christmas dinner.
Realizing my Southern nature has not been as easy for me as my love for elbow noodles baked in milk and sharp cheddar cheese. Maybe it’s due to the fact that I never developed a Southern accent, the most obvious giveaway. But never have I wanted to go huntin’ or muddin’ and the thought of watchin’ football all day every Saturday makes me cringe. I’m not a “Southern belle” by any means. By most observable measurements, I am an outsider in my own element.
I yearned to get away from the sterile South, where I refused to return frat boys’ cries of “ROLL TIDE,” especially during football season. How could I support Bryant-Denny Stadium’s current role as Number One on the campus map? Number one at an institution of learning should be the library, not the football stadium.
I was tired of judgmental looks from all these religious people who might think that I was going to hell because the curvature of my breasts was readily seen through my shirt and not the foam cups of a Wonderbra.
So I left. Instead of limiting myself within the bounds of Alabama interstates, I flew north to Boston, west to Washington, south to Chile and east to Europe.
***
When I was a kid, before dreams of exotic locales had itched their way into my head, I could always tell hours in advance if we’d be having moussaka for dinner. The heavy smell of Fry-Daddy oil crept past the slate-tiled entryway like the angel of death in the movie The Ten Commandments, even down into the basement. I’d see my mother through the kitchen door, dutifully slicing potatoes. While she sliced and fried, the granite countertop pressed hard against my chest as I stepped up on tippy-toes in order to have a clearer view of the golden fried potatoes that represented my mother’s Albanian blood. I could eat the thin, crunchy chips as soon as my mom salted them and they cooled off a bit.
In those days, when I was too young to care much about the concept of heritage, the homemade potato chips meant only a surprise snack before dinner. But a couple years later, while visiting my mom’s family in Boston, my aunts decided that my cousin Marielle and I would participate in the city’s annual cultural parade. My aunt and uncle brought the two of us to the Albanian Orthodox church. We ransacked a closet full of traditional Albanian clothing and upon exiting the church, the cool breeze ruffled the white cotton of my peasant shirt against my arms.
Marielle and I displayed the full-sized flag of the country of our grandparents with ardor, as the full-blooded grownup Albanians danced and beat tambourines.
Later that night, with the sweat of Boston summers still crystallized on our skin, my mom and Xaxi (Uncle) Johnny told us stories about their post-college trip to Albania, about meeting the family we still have there. My uncle pulled out a photo of my mom wearing a white cotton dress, standing in front of an ivy-encased stone doorway somewhere in rural Albania. The photo still haunts my thoughts from time to time. There was something magical about that ivy and that dress, something that I have not stopped wishing for since I saw them.
***
The entirety of my fanatical Albanian family gathered on the expanse of my Xaxi Peter’s back porch. A couple hundred meters away, clouds and the waters of Buzzard’s Bay morphed into one grey being; a foxtail of grass lined by forest follows behind, all the way to the house. Each of my three cousins, two aunts, two uncles, Nena, parents, and my sister had thrown on salmon pink shirts that proclaimed “Camp Lakror 2005” in tiny white letters.
The wine glasses in everyone’s hands trembled. The shish kabob was almost finished grilling. Five minutes later, as my uncle lifted the lid, he proclaimed “Opa!” and raised the spear of lamb meat above his head. Laughing, my mom and Xaxi Johnny joined him in a dance, complete with butcher knives, and followed the shish kabob inside with smiling teeth and knives flashing toward the night sky.
My tiny Nena, who has shrunk so much she’s now a whole head shorter than me, delights in the antics of her three children. It doesn’t take them much to convince her to spend a few hours making a lakror, a traditional Albanian spinach pie. She is the only person left in the United States who makes lakror the right way, or so my mom says. Nena has been making the dish for decades and my family treats it like gold.
I, on the other hand, am still trying to condition myself to like the stuff. No matter how zealously I try, I can’t manage to eat a whole piece. Something about the creamy, soft filling throws me off every time, but the crust is something so wonderful that it’s almost intangible. Perfectly browned and bigger than an extra large pizza pie, a lakror is truly a beautiful thing.
My fifteen-year-old self thought that somehow, if I could convince myself to enjoy eating lakror, my Albanian half would develop and I would no longer be behind the curve of my Boston cousins, who were much more steeped in that culture. There is no Albanian population in Alabama, so my sister and I are more or less stuck with what little our mom tells us about her heritage.
It seemed so exciting to be from a different country or to have an exotic lineage to explore.
***
I made a pact with myself that if the opportunity arose for me to go someplace new, especially someplace international, I would take it. In the three years since I turned 20, I’ve traveled to six foreign countries and a handful of U.S. cities. Pieces of my heart are scattered globally, as I fell in love with certain aspects of each place.
In the northwest corner of the Northwest, Bellingham, Washington, I walked to school through a temperate rainforest for three months. Rounding a corner of the path, I’d come to a certain area where I liked to think fairies lived. Tiny bright green leaves surrounded the place, their spidery branches extending into the path where my fingers reached out toward them, gently brushing dew off them in the morning mist. The seemingly omnipresent clouds overcast the sun and made every shade of green infinitely more vibrant.
There is a staggering amount of art in Valparaíso, Chile; it is clear that Valpo is a city of creators, no matter where you look. One example is the ex-Cárcel, the ex-prison of the city; this building that witnessed a 20th-century dictatorship has been converted into a haven of paintings and sculptures. Ideas akin to the one that created the ex-Cárcel fill the soul of Valparaíso like the vagabundos—the homeless—fill the bellies of stray dogs with the food they acquire.
***
Friends and acquaintances express from time to time their jealousy of my travels, but really the thing I’ve come to value aren’t the things I’ve found in other places. I have learned to appreciate home. Maybe instead of exploring the surfaces of other cultures, I should probe deeper into my own to find subcultures within that ever-stereotyped group of Southerners. Knowing my own culture, the one I’ve been halfway ashamed to embrace for my whole life, might help me to better understand the others.
Perhaps the twenties are the point in life when this generally happens for everyone, but I think for sure that my generation—the people who have felt the United States had so many problems—we are changing our minds and realizing our love for this country and for Alabama. We don’t desire to flee when we see something we don’t like, but to make it better.
***
“You know, I can’t believe you just said that,” I whispered, cocking my head to the side a bit.
“Well, it’s true. The United States is the best country in the world,” Allen repeated. Four years age he had chosen to attend college in Canada because he was so frustrated with what he saw happening in the U.S. Now, sitting in a Birmingham bar, I stared at him incredulously through cans and glasses of beer.
“I’m tired of Vancouver,” he went on. “The people are flaky and they’re just not real. I’m ready to move back to the South. People here are friendly. They’ll help you out in a bind. They’ll call you ‘baby’ even when they don’t know your name and they’ll always ask you how you’re doin’ and at least pretend like they care.
“Just notice the undeniable beauty of the trees here,” he continued. “People appreciate people. There are so many good things about the South and about Alabama. People just don’t look for them.”
After a few minutes I’d finished my beer. When I returned from buying another round, I found Allen absorbed in conversation with the man who’d been sitting caddy-corner to our table. I wondered if they were kin until they asked each other’s names.
***
In previous years it seemed so much more exciting to be from some other country—any other country. Now I am proud of where I come from, proud to be from Alabama, the South, the United States. Maybe this change in attitude comes with travel and experience, actually seeing other countries, even seeing other parts of my own country. Maybe it’s because no matter where I’ve gone, I always hear “Sweet Home Alabama” and everyone knows and loves Forrest Gump.
It took me until my twenty-second year to appreciate my upbringing and my own culture; I had been stuck somewhere between desiring the city life of Boston or the exotic life of a rainforest hut, wishing for one extreme or the other.
***
I saw only one University of Alabama T-shirt during the three months I lived in the Northwest. Crimson flashed before me as I rounded an aisle at the grocery store. Elated to see one small fragment of home, I extended a friendly “Roll Tide” to the young man. All I received was an inquisitive stare from him and a twinge of disappointment.
In December, stuck in the Seattle airport waiting on stormy weather to subside, I was surrounded by a sea of bright red T-shirts and strong Southern drawls. These forty-odd Alabamians who had just finished an Alaskan cruise were an early re-entry reminder, forcing me to “enter” the South about eight hours earlier than I had anticipated. Though I cringed a bit at their loud “y’all”s, I was secretly glad to be surrounded by strangers who instantly felt like family.
***
Two and a half years later, the turbulence on a plane home from France made the passengers audibly nervous. At least once a collective pseudo-calm, quiet gasp escaped from several people in unison. After being away for two weeks, I was not happy about the apparent possibility of death before I set foot in my homeland. For perhaps too long, I thought about how much I would like to kiss the ground when we landed.
21 April 2009
jerry grimaldi
"good and bad," my mom started, and i instinctively got the same vibe as when i came home the night after exams finished 2 years ago. that night, my dad was in the hospital for a heart condition; my family had chosen not to tell me, so as to not distract me from my studies.
"your dad and i went to the golf course this morning, jerry was there with all his old fart friends," she continued. i didn't want to believe that something had happened to one of my parents' best friends, an ex-fbi agent and teller of tall tales "we were making our way around the course, and a bunch of fire trucks pulled up to the front of the course."
my neighbor died today.
jerry grimaldi suffered a massive heart attack on the green of the oak mountain state park golf course. my mom thought out loud, "i think i was the last one to give him a hug."
this is the man who showed up to my parents' new years eve party wearing a jet black suit, frilly baby blue shirt and the shiniest black shoes i've ever seen. "the wife of the dictator of bolivia stepped on this shoe while we were dancing," he'd boasted. "i used to fit into this suit when i bought it in 1972."
jerry was always telling some story about driving the vice president in a stretch limo through a centuries-old town so small the limo grazed the corners of buildings on a sharp turn. his first job as a 13-year-old in new york city was as an elevatorman in a skyscraper. clark gable or one of those guys rode in jerry's elevator on the way to the US army office. he unfailingly proclaimed his atheism in the face of my christian father and mother. he and my parents exchanged books about their religions.
it's an interesting thing, the concept of death, the thought that people just go away and don't ever return.
"your dad and i went to the golf course this morning, jerry was there with all his old fart friends," she continued. i didn't want to believe that something had happened to one of my parents' best friends, an ex-fbi agent and teller of tall tales "we were making our way around the course, and a bunch of fire trucks pulled up to the front of the course."
my neighbor died today.
jerry grimaldi suffered a massive heart attack on the green of the oak mountain state park golf course. my mom thought out loud, "i think i was the last one to give him a hug."
this is the man who showed up to my parents' new years eve party wearing a jet black suit, frilly baby blue shirt and the shiniest black shoes i've ever seen. "the wife of the dictator of bolivia stepped on this shoe while we were dancing," he'd boasted. "i used to fit into this suit when i bought it in 1972."
jerry was always telling some story about driving the vice president in a stretch limo through a centuries-old town so small the limo grazed the corners of buildings on a sharp turn. his first job as a 13-year-old in new york city was as an elevatorman in a skyscraper. clark gable or one of those guys rode in jerry's elevator on the way to the US army office. he unfailingly proclaimed his atheism in the face of my christian father and mother. he and my parents exchanged books about their religions.
it's an interesting thing, the concept of death, the thought that people just go away and don't ever return.
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