My Hometown

Well, I was having a good morning, till I decided to choke myself on a sip of coffee. But I’m alright now; I spit it back into the cup and drink it again… I know.
 
Last night I went to bed rather quickly till around four in the morning when I was awakened by a series of dreams about my hometown of Bloomingdale, GA. In my dream, the sleepy little suburb of Savannah changed from streets lined with simple tract houses to having been mowed down to make room for new warehouses for the expanding port and the auto plant nearby. I was walking around looking for all the landmarks that made this place my home. And all I could see were row after row of metal-sided buildings and a huge paved-over parking lot. All the houses were gone. The canal I crossed over on a railroad tie to go to school and caught tadpoles in on endless summers. Jone’s Service Station where I bought and brought cigarettes for my grandparents. Even the Baptist church behind my grandparents' house, where we went to church. All gone.
 
When I woke up I felt disoriented and sad about what had happened to the history of my youth. But to be honest, ever since my mother passed some 20 years ago, I haven’t been back to Bloomingdale very much, other than to check on my father’s gravesite. My life and my home has been centered on the middle of the state for the last 32 years. So some may wonder why I still call Chatham County my home.
 
Well, my wife can tell you, I’ve always called old people “Granny.” Even though I’m a Grandpa myself and have been for over ten years. It’s funny how my adult children see me as old. How my grandkids definitely see me as old. Hell, my damn body knows I am old. So why do I still see myself as that fat, four-eyed kid from 103 South Chestnut Street?
 
I guess within each of us that’s how it’s always going to be. My years in old B’dale weren’t all sunshine and roses. I grew up fat and believe me I was teased for it. I had a lisp when I spoke, for which I was teased more. Neighborhood kids can be the cruelest bullies of them all. But I learned to escape their taunts by playing the clown, and for most of my life it worked. So after 63 years, I have developed an armor as thick as a tank.
 
So where am I going with this, you may ask? I suppose I’m here to say that despite the distance between me and Bloomingdale and all its painful memories… it’s still home. Every so often we need to exercise the pain that lives within us, no matter how deep. You can try to bury it deeper, but eventually, those seeds of pain will peer through the cracks of the thickest concrete. So I often have to look that pain square in the eye and hold it tight and tell that kid that I love you and that it’s going to be okay.
 
So many of us glorify the past with our stories of “remember when?” when in fact the good old days weren’t all that good. Abuse and pain linger just around the edges, shaping us in ways we find hard to look at. But life is finite, just like my old man who lays under Gravel Hill Cemetery. I realize now that I’m not just visiting a gravesite when I go back to Chatham County; I’m visiting that fat, four-eyed kid from 103 South Chestnut Street. The canal where I caught tadpoles might be paved over by a parking lot, and the Baptist church might be gone, but that boy is still there. As the warehouses move in and the world changes, I’m going to keep holding his hand and tell him he’s going to be alright. For we’re both just trying to get home.
 
#Memories #InnerChild #Healing #Compassion #Change