Many years ago, I came across an article from Southern Living magazine about growing up in the south. Recently, cleaning out my office in a retirement transition I found this little gem and wanted to share portions of it again with my readers. The writer and her husband had lived in Paris, London, and New York, but when settling down to raise a family they knew it would have to be in the south.
"For us, having spent our own childhoods picking blackberries along the sides of South Carolina's country roads, bringing our babies home to the south was the completion of one of nature's mysterious cycles. Like Loggerhead turtles returning to their seminal shores, we made sure our daughters' roots would grow in close proximity to those of their grandmothers. How better than to have the legacy of cane-pole fishing and church hymns that even my husband and I couldn't dismiss. Summer in the south - how could a kid grow up without it?"
She went on to detail the life her girls got to enjoy in this southern 1990's setting, now thirty years ago. A land where old people sat in straight-back chairs under shade trees older than they were and waited on lightning bugs to show. Although times have changed in the quarter century since she had caught June Bugs and made mud pies that dried and cracked in the inferno of blistering afternoons, the scenarios had remained the same.
"Like Southern children from years gone by, our girls will watch in wonder as Mama's butcher knife splits open a well-thumped, blood red watermelon, and they'll stand by the front porch railing, faces sticky, juice running down their arms, and spit seeds to the edge of the yard. They'll feast on sweet corn, baking powder biscuits, and iced tea. They'll slide their toes along the squishy bottoms of Southern lakes and rivers and watch minnows scurry by. They'll taste the brine of the Atlantic and forever recognize the smell of the sea as a mixture of salt, sweat, and suntan lotion.”
“They will gauge nighttime temperatures by counting the cricket chirps outside their windows. And, when they grow into the homesick-for-childhood adults, their summer memories will be peppered with images of monstrous mosquito bites, night falls that always came too soon, and grandparents' stories that may seem meaningless at the time but later reveal an undeniable understanding of life at its fullest."
The writer did an excellent job of describing why so many of us want to pass this torch of memories on to our children and grandchildren. There is no way to share these sweet memories other than to let them experience life in the south for themselves. She captures it well.
"There is something about a Southern summer childhood that brings us back or never really lets us stray. Something about warm dew on the ankles, tree frogs, Spanish moss, and tadpoles. Something about the smell of honeysuckle floating on hot air so moist it sticks to your face and hands. Something that makes generation after generation of Southern parents set their barefoot children on cool back-porch steps and say, 'Take a deep breath. Now that's what it smells like to be alive.'"
Well said, Mrs. Boiter. Thirty plus years later and not much has changed. Like the slow moving south and the promise of humidity ours is an inheritance passed down with pride and southern comfort.
