This is home

I’ve been traveling for the past week, and I’ve had no time to write. There are so many things I love about being a writer, but the amount of time it takes to think, find a pearl to hold onto, get into a flow, and compose something cogent and relevant about that pearl is not one of them. That isn’t because I don’t like to take the time, but rather because I often do not have it due to running here, there, and yonder like I do lately. Like I always have, if I’m being honest.

It’s all good. It’s all worth it. I spent four days with Hayes on the road, then headed to Alabama to visit my grandmother, aunt, and uncle. It’s been busy, even if I was just busy being with my people. However, a writer writes. It’s late and I’m snugged up in my aunt’s guest room, but here I am, a little bleary and weary, ready to report on it all.

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I sat here for three minutes trying to think of what the transistion phrase is that goes here. I can only think of one word: relationship. It is through relationship that we are ever known. It is through relationship that we are ever home. I haven’t lived in my aunt’s house for thirty-four years, and the house she lives in now isn’t the same one she had in 1989 — it’s not even in the same town, but when I walk in her door, I feel home.

I was orphaned at fourteen. There are places in me that know no home at all. But there are places in me that do, too, and they rise up when I hear the voices that I’ve heard since I was born, when I smell the familiar smells, when I taste a grilled cheese that was prepared on that same old black cast-iron skillet I’ve seen on the stove a thousand times, when I feel arms around me that held me when I was a child, that held me when I was a traumatized teenager just trying to figure out how to take her next breath, that held me yesterday.

Perfection doesn’t exist. Not in people, anyway. I’m not acquainted with anyone who doesn’t have a lot to forgive and a lot to be forgiven for. But the grace that enters our hearts when we feel known can turn what is unsayable into the understood. There is no equal comfort that I know.

Today, I listened to my grandmother tell a story about how she learned to sing harmony. I recorded her for seventeen minutes while she recounted how she and her sister Lillian listened to The Delmore Brothers and picked up how to do it. I wonder if she knows she made my life’s trajectory by hearing what she did?

There I am, in the circle.

I’m quite sure Nanny didn’t imagine that her sister’s and her determination to listen to the Grand Ole Opry (I’ll write more about this — it is priceless) would lead her granddaughter there one day, but it did.

This is my grandmother. My Mama’s mama.

I sat with my Aunt Jane, my Mama’s sister, and painted today. She is an artist, like quite a few people in my family (on both sides), and is obsessed with watercolor like I am. We spent all day with our paper and paints, talking, laughing, crying, revealing, and taking comfort in each other. There are all kinds of words I could put here to describe how I feel tonight, but H O M E is only one that can hold it.

Peace. Love.

Allison

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Today’s work.

Check out this Delmore Brothers song Nanny and Lillian used to sing. I might have to learn it.

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