The Green Green Grass of Home...

June 30th, 2009

It is winter here in the Southern Hemisphere and that fact continues to separate me on some fundamental level from the place of my birth. Lately, when I think of home I don’t just think of the area of the planet that is north of the equator. I think of the part of the United States of America where I was born, where I spent my childhood, where much of what is left of my family still lives. I grew up in the Deep South and I miss being there right now. I have been told by other expats that this is normal. It is an unfamiliar hunger to me. I have never been a particularly sentimental person, I didn't think.

My mother died this year and my sister Maggie has since bridged a gap with my brother, father, and half sister Diana, their husband and wives. It is important to note that for reasons varied and antiquated none of these people speaks to me unless there is some emergency and have not for many years. In the past few days my sisters have both posted photographs from an impromptu family reunion, and from my mother’s funeral - which I could not attend - on their FaceBook pages. It is one of the ironies of modern life that my sisters don't have a relationship with me but we are "FaceBook friends". I find that these pictures awaken a longing in me I did not know was there.

After years of estrangement I realize I do not know the people they have become, but I remember who they are to me and I miss them. I see my brother smile in the picture and I miss him. I see the wives and husband of my father, brother and half sister and I wish I knew them better, or even at all. I see my sister smiling and hugging them, being comforted by them, laughing with them and I miss her and wish I were there to hear her laugh, to see her smile, to comfort her. Somehow they have all forgiven one another and learned to grow closer as they grow older. I wonder what has changed and softened in them that makes this possible. I wonder why it does not extend to me.


clockwise from far left, my father, my younger sister Maggie, my older brother Tony, my much younger half sister Diana

My son too, in the photos from my mother’s funeral, stands close to his uncle so that I can see the nose, mouth, even facial expression they share. My brother Tony was never much of an uncle so they have spent very little time together, but I’ve always seen my brother in my son. That way they both hold a forefinger near the corner of their mouths when they think hard. The way they each have of dismissing conversation they find absurd with absolute sarcasm. That extremely opinionated way of telling you exactly what they think - wait, I do that too. Alex didn’t learn that from anyone. He was born to do those things. It’s in his blood. I didn’t know that when he was born. I learned it as I watched him grow into a man who, remarkably, looked just like my big brother, except shorter and with blond hair. And just like my brother I both love him and wish he were different. I wish they were gentler with people. I wish they both would take better care of themselves. I adore them both. I think they are both incredibly funny. I am moved beyond reason by any expression of love from either of them and I am deeply heart broken because they don’t talk to me. No matter what, I love them.


My Brother Tony and my Son Alex at my Mother's Funeral

Jimmy asked me tonight why I care. He doesn’t know my family, except for my son Alex, because it was long before I met him that they stopped talking to me. He does know old stories though and he wonders why I would want a relationship with such people. When he asked me that I could not answer except to ask him to consider why he cares about the connections he has to family members, some of whom he never even knew and some of whom he has struggled to like. I think he understood some. It’s family, that’s why. It doesn't matter how many years and miles and life changes and choices come between us. What matters is that we share a connection that is indescribably deep. I haven't lived with my brother since I was 13 and my son never has, yet I can look at my brother, who looks so much like my father, and see the face of my son. I can't explain it any better than that.

In one image my brother, who used to catch catfish for our supper when he was a little boy, is sitting near a shallow Southern river, weeds sprouting through the grass that covers the moist, rich soil at his feet. I can taste the humid summer day in that picture. I can feel the heat of the deep American South in summertime on my skin. I can hear the mosquitoes hum and taste the cold beer and smell the hot oil those catfish are cooked in. In that moment I don’t care what kind of man my brother has grown into, whether we vote the same way or believe in the same things. In that moment, him sitting there in the Southern heat on a picnic table bench in the June afternoon, everyone he loves nearby, I just want to be there with him and to feel his beautiful smile on me. I want my brother to love me. I want my sister to laugh with me about some sisterly secret. I want my dad to look over and find all four of his children drinking beer together and talking about the mundane things people talk about. I don’t know why I want this. But I do.


A shallow river near my brother's home in Nashville, TN in June, 2009

Living here, in the Southern Hemisphere where the days are very cold now and the air is crisp, the sky gray, I feel so very far away from them, my family. It is not coming here that created that distance, yet it feels as though it makes it harder to bridge. I am glad we came here, and I hope to learn many things from this journey. One thing I have learned that I did not expect to, is that this is not my land. I have a homeland very far from here and no matter far I go it will always own a piece of me.