Tribute

Around mile marker 68 on I-95 South, my mind always drifts to my past. There are about 20 miles before the exit I'll need to take to pull into my hometown and my thoughts linger on salt marshes and Spanish moss and oyster shells and white caps on the river. The imagery and smells of my childhood mix with it's people and places. Memories amuse me and also make me nauseous. Driving home is filled with the anticipation of peace and the tension of remembering things I'd rather not. I try to swat away the bad memories like the gnats that begin their assault as soon as I step out of the car and into the humid coastal air. Swarms of unhealthy relationships, poor choices, clumsy scenes and a generally awkward growth process infiltrate. I want to retreat.

This year marked a milestone in my time away from the sea islands of South Carolina where I was born. I have now lived more years away than I did here but the word "home" is weightier in Beaufort and it always will be.

Beaufort, SC pronounced like "bew-" (not to be confused with Beaufort, NC, pronounced like it's spelled) sits between Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC and is made up of a series of island chains, each with it's own qualities and local lore. The history is thick. The pre-Civil War homes overlooking deep water and old cotton plantation mansions have been remodeled but today's aristocracy still live there. The African Gullah heritage can still be heard in the dialects of the people and the views from a renowned drawbridge are ever breathtaking. I love this town for it's beauty and history but my personal history is thick here too. Like the stories of this town, not all of my history is beautiful or something I care to visit again. It's not all idyllic beaches, intricate tabby foundations or the sound of gulls on the sand.

My mom's house has always been one of the most inviting and comforting places. She says one of the best compliments she ever received was when her friend told her visiting her house is like getting a warm hug. She is indeed an excellent hostess. She makes more than enough food. She is funny and caring and corrects my children's grammar as she takes them in the backyard to look at bugs with a magnifying glass and tells them the names of all of the plants in her yard. I wonder if Beaufort would still carry the weight of "home" if she didn't live here because along with the joy I feel as I listen to my children giggle in her backyard, I swat away the inevitable sting from regrets of the past.

If I could talk to the teenage me, I might shake her first. I think the teenage me would need a good hard shake before she listened. Then I would tell her all of the pain she could avoid by making different choices, all of the people who could be spared from her selfish obliviousness, and all of the ways she could enjoy the freedom of being young without the burden of caring so much about things that don't matter at all. But then I wonder if 55-year-old me would tell 35-year-old me the same things. (At least 55-year-old me wouldn't have to lecture 35-year-old me about having horrible bangs. That is one mistake I won't repeat.)

I recognize people in the grocery stores, restaurants and downtown street corners in Beaufort and they recognize me but they don't know me. They knew the person I was when I lived here and although that girl is long gone, she haunts me when I come to visit.

Johnnathan has so many good memories from his teenage years in his one-stoplight Iowa hometown. Even the bad memories sound like he is playing a key role in a high-school romantic comedy. He's the heart-breaker, a star football player, the homecoming king, a boy learning what he wants to look like as a man. But even with the rose-colored memories of his past, he wanted to escape where he grew up too. This is a common thread of my generation, especially for those from small towns where everyone mostly knows everyone. The storylines written about a character returning to their own hometown, facing their past demons, making amends, and finding new worth or direction have become cliché. Even Jesus had something to say about how difficult it is to overcome the hometown stigma (Mark 6:1-6).

So why is this? I’m not certain. Hometowns contain the history of our early lives and provide the experiences that impart either wisdom or rejection, strength or failure, (or all of the above) that shape who we will become. Hometowns have made us who we are in ways other experiences cannot.

Some are lucky enough to grow up in a place and stay there, letting the richness of their childhoods inform the changes in their character on display for the supporters and naysayers alike. Others leave for a time and return, knowing the weightiness of home will never be found any place else. They bring back the best of what they've learned and their town is the better for it.

Others are like me, leaving and only returning for short family visits. For us, maybe we didn’t want to escape where we grew up but rather the way we saw the world from that place and the way others saw us there. Maybe we weren’t really running away from the town that raised us. Maybe we were running toward finding the person we hoped we could become instead someday.

I realized after this most recent trip to visit family and celebrate Thanksgiving and everything I have to be grateful for that I did not really need to make amends with my hometown or it's people. Rather, I think I needed to make amends with part of it's history: my former self who emerges like a ghost in whispers and fog.

Reminders of the years of my youth fluttered back as I watched the leaves fall in my mom's backyard and I want to pay tribute to this place.

I was a baby in Beaufort, born chubby and innocent. I swam in salt water here and rubbed my entire body with pluff mud as a “spa treatment.” I enacted commercials and put on performances for my parents in our living room here. I ate late-night breakfast cereal for dessert and was scared of the dark here. I had nightmares about the bad guys from Home Alone here and learned how to take control of my dreams so that I began dictating nightly fairytales while I slept here. I learned to spell and read and write here and got sun-burned way more times than is healthy here. I had my first best friend, my first boyfriend and my first heartbreak here. I made terrible fashion decisions and worse hair decisions and remember vividly the first time I ever saw a music video on MTV here. I learned to study, drive, work hard, and take care of myself here. I watched brilliant sunsets before I fully appreciated them and I laughed loudly and uncontrollably until my nostrils flared and my belly hurt here. I made amazing friends and awful mistakes here. I knew some phenomenal people here who are likely unaware of how they influenced me when I was here.

The small and seemingly inconsequential instances of daily life when the people of my hometown showed me kindness, acceptance, or boldly told me the truth have burned themselves into my memory to now become a part of what I hope I am giving to my children and friends. Slightly ironically, we are getting ready to move our children to their own future small hometown. We escaped from the small hometowns of our childhoods to find our dreams in another.

So I decided that the next time I see that mile marker on I-95 South, I’ll ignore the gnats to honor Beaufort the way it deserves and pay homage to the place that raised me. I will enjoy the rareness of it’s beauty and accept all of it’s history. I’ll offer kindness to the ghost-girl of my past and be empathetic to her naivety instead of berating her for deeds long dead. I will thank this place for reminding me of how very much I have been forgiven. It is time that I made amends and embrace my past the way Beaufort continues to embrace me: with a warm hug.