Can you ever really go home?

The corridor connecting Florence to Williamsburg to Georgetown County runs along highways 41 and 51. From Mingo's corner store to the Swamp Fox gas station, this stretch of road is referred to as "Brown's Ferry Road." From Mingo's to Florence, depending on your location, it is referred to as "41-51", "River Road", or "Claussen Road." This stretch of highway runs 82 miles. With the exception of the little farming towns of Johnsonville and Hemigway, for the most part, this is a desolate stretch of highway lined with a profusion of rural farmlands and loblolly pines towering overhead.

In the Fall, the foliage changes to a palette of crimson, orange, yellow, and gold. The fields are heavy with the cotton crops or the wizened remnants of the last corn harvest. Small, antiquated farming sheds meld into the surrounding woodlands along side newly constructed homes. There is a poignant juxtaposition in the convergence of these two structures sitting beside one another. The symbolic subtext here is that the past and present meet yet never really become one.

I moved to Florence, SC eight years ago, a transplant from Pawleys Island, SC. At the time, I wasn't quite sure if I was running away from something or running toward something. Among the myriad of questions I was asked concerning my move, my favorite would be, "Why would you ever leave the beach?" It is a comical misconception among many of those who do not take up a permanent residence in a coastal town that everyone who lives near the beach visits it every day. Frankly, the beach becomes more of a hassle during the Spring and Summer months because of the influx of tourist to the area. This is especially true in a small town like Pawleys Island.

The truth is that I came to Florence to take a teaching position at a local high school. I moved the day school ended in 2008 to a small house on Lorraine Avenue. The neighborhood was welcoming and conveniently located across the street from my children's elementary school. I felt a mix of emotions ranging from excitement at the possibilities this new town had to offer and a sense of dolefulness for the life I was leaving behind. When I left that little town, I never wanted to come back. I wanted to be anonymous. I wanted to start a new life where no one knew me, my family, or anything about me. I wanted to be my own person, or at least, that's what I told myself.

The first night in my new house in Florence I felt despondent. Why had I come here? How would I make it here? Was this an egregious error in judgement? That summer, before I started my new teaching job, was the loneliest I had ever been. I had no friends or family to help me assimilate to this new, big town. I remember, a week after I moved here, I received a call from Georgetown High School offering me a job. A wave of hesitation washed over me before I told them I had already signed a contract with my new school. With that phone call, it became official; I was a resident of Florence.

On my first day at my new school, it quickly became the most overwhelming place I could ever imagine. Waccamaw High School has a student enrollment of just over 800. This school housed close to 1700 then (now it is quickly approaching 2000). After the first week, I began to feel more comfortable in my new environment. I found my way to various restaurants, coffee shops, and clothing stores. I developed a mental list of landmarks around town to guide me to my favorite destinations (Turn by Red Bone Alley, over the over-pass, when you see the big Pepsi bottle billboard, you are almost at the mall). Slowly, I made friends and began to build a life here.

When I come back to Pawley's and see the moss covered oaks that line the road to my parents house, nostalgia of the life I used to have here overwhelms me. For the majority of my life, I called this place my home. When I turn the corner that leads to my parents' house, I think about how my husband and I went on our first date in this town and all of my children were born in this town.

How many times have I driven these roads? They are as familiar to me as the faces of my own children; I believe I could drive them blindfolded. I know all the backroads to any destination and secret hiding spots where first kisses are made. I know the best places for crab cakes, shrimp and grits, or the best steak in town. This is my hometown.

As I pull into my parents' driveway and turn off the car, I think about how much I miss them. How long has it been since I saw them last? And I realize a month or two or six have slipped by since the last time.

There are striking similarities between Pawleys Island and Florence. Because so much has changed in Pawleys and so many new people have moved there, I don't recognize the people in the restaurants. In Florence, because the town is so big, I don't recognize the people in the restaurants here either. Both places have their locals, those people who have lived here all of their lives and take pride in that fact. There are copious amounts of southern charm and the ubiquitous easy smile given by strangers as you pass. But for a transplant, it is hard to know where exactly to call “home."

Florence offered me a place to grow, a place to start anew. Pawleys island is the keeper of my childhood memories; however, when I go back to Pawleys, I don't recognize the landscape or people who now visit my old spots. In Florence, I can't seem to get comfortable enough to make if feel like it's home.

There is a great line at the end of Pat Conroy's novel, The Prince of Tides, where Tom Wingo says, "At the end of every day I drive through the city of Charleston and I cross the bridge that will take me home. I feel the words building inside me, I can't stop them, or tell you why I say them, but as I reach the top of the bridge these words come to me in a whisper." What is it in each of us that seeks to connect who we are with who we were? What is it that defines where our true home is? Like the old farm shed beside the new home, there is a space where the past and present meet but can never become one. Where do you call "home" when the old one feels different and the new one feels distant? When I pass the big bridge over the Waccamaw River and the smell of the ocean in the air hits me, I hear the words build inside of me. They rise with the beating of my heart and softly they whisper, "you're almost home."

Pipe Dreams and Brick Walls

Here's the thing, I have always wanted to be a writer. Convincing myself that I would either have to write sappy love stories (Of course, set along the beaches of the Carolinas) or vampirical teen romance novels (complete with a profoundly weak female protagonist) to earn any money, I only partially invested any sort of energy into the actual idea of making it happen. Take for example the random pieces (such as this) that I post from time to time. 

Here's how it starts: I get an idea. I toy with it for a few weeks. It tumbles around in my head along with the bills, my children's activities, my job teaching, my soapbox moments on Facebook, my husband's company, Duncan Donuts tea, and the Walking Dead reruns. Finally, after it keeps nagging at me to get out, I have a moment of brilliance! I see the words forming on the page. The piece takes on a life of its own! I experience the single most intellectually gratifying moment of my life! My fingers move across the keys with accuracy, as if they've known what to type my whole life! A word wizard! The lines begin to sing their song to me! With each line I pen, the letters twist to form sentences that I had no idea I was even capable of writing! And then, with the final punctuation in place, the moment is gone...as if it never even happened. And the beautiful, melodious lines fail to connect to anything beyond that single period. 

A brick wall. 

Over the years, I have crafted a collection of wonderful characters in my mind. I perfected their histories and scripted their secrets. My mind has played their stories over and over until I could not separate their memories from my own. I lived vicariously through their adventures, and, when they were finally ready to reveal themselves to the pages of my notebook, I filed them under "Pipe Dreams" and packed them all away. 

The reality is that I have always and will always do this. I am always "working" a story in my mind. I see something happen in my own life and the very first thought I have is "that would make a great storyline." It is a burden to look at life and always be searching for the story.

Seeking.  

So, Langston Hughes, what really does happen to a dream deferred? I'm fairly certain it doesn't dry up like a raisin in the sun or explode...I'm pretty sure it collects interest like a student loan. Nagging, accruing interest. Every day, every single day, my dream deferred is accruing interest at about 6.5% compounded daily. And I have been spreading my payments out for the last 30 yrs towards my 90 yr pay off. 

I make my payments in the form of thoughts of what could be, thoughts of what should be, and thoughts about what is. And each day, when I make my payment, my heart wishes it never took the loan out. I wish I never would have written the first word. I wish I didn't know what it felt like to breathe life into these figments of my imagination. I wish my soul didn't know the pain of not knowing what could happen next. I wish I had never felt my heartbeat quicken with the thought of a "perfect ending"... to an unsung tale. 

Some people collect coins, some people collect cars or sports cards or whatnots; I collect stories. I find them, invent them, raise and nurture them. I imagine all the possibility they hold. And then... I sit them on the shelves of the recesses of my mind...between "What could be" and "What is." And there they will sit, collecting dust, until the day I forget the were ever even real. 

A Case of the What Ifs

I have a serious problem with rules. I can’t accept the “this is the way it’s always been done” mentality. My ex-husband once told me, “why do you have to question every single thing? Why do you have to be such a rebel?” Well, I’m a dreamer…which automatically means there is always another way things can work out! 

If I’m honest with myself, I had always wanted to be just an average girl in high school. I clearly remember hating myself because my sarcastic comments or my inability to keep my mouth shut when I disagreed often got me into more arguments with friends than I intended. In addition, I am pretty sure that my secret yearning for existential conversation wouldn’t have fared well among my friends. At 15, you can’t look at the “popular” girls and say shit like, “isn’t it cool how every one of us came from the same material that makes up every star in the universe?” I mean, saying something like that won’t get you too many party invites. 

See, “things” (the world, song lyrics, books, poems, comets crashing into the planet) have always deeply affected me. I can read a poem and spend weeks examining the gravity of it and how it fundamentally changes my perspective on the world. Or the time in 1994 when Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter. I remember watching the broadcast on tv at my grandparent’s house. I seriously worried about this for years. I took an astronomy class in college just so I could learn more about comets and asteroids. (that literally was the only reason I took the class) The fear of comets crashing into the planet only grew until one day someone told me, “Hayley, I have a fear of building a house and the plumbing system backing up and shit spraying all over me. Now what do you think the chances of that happening are?” And that was how my fear of comets crashing into the planet ended. 

In the 8th grade, I built a miniature model of an ecosystem to show the effects of global warming on our planet. I had a heat-lamp, thermometers, a fish tank with a little village in it, and everything. I got second place because I told my science teacher that I had a secretarial service make these really cool headers for my project report. (I should add that my honesty has gotten me into more trouble than it has been worth throughout my life…I should have practiced being a better liar.) The guy who won made a clock run with a potato. I’m serious. I still haven't gotten over that. Screw the planet, right? Look at this clock this kid made with a starchy vegetable. (side note: This has nothing to do with the point of this tale, but I’m still not completely over it yet…still a little angsty about the entire thing) 

Anyway…

I feel like my life has been this series of free-falling, “let’s see what happens”  experiences. I am sure, on more than one occasion, my family and friends have looked at my life choices and thought to themselves, “what the hell is she doing?” That’s okay. I really didn’t know what I was doing either. I tend to just jump without much forethought about how fast I’m falling or the consequences. While some of my jumps have brought me amazing life experiences, other jumps left me a bit broken and bruised. 

I can say, looking back, that I’ve very few regrets. There are just a handful of “what ifs” that visit me from time to time. The thing is, these what ifs were really big. When they do visit, they like to stay for months. I play their songs over and over in my head until they finally stop singing or I put them to bed with a “there’s nothing you can do about that now.” 

One, in particular, likes to visit most often. I’m reminded of it in the lyrics to various songs, the lines in books or poems, the stars in the night sky, the waves crashing on the beach. It has become an old friend of sorts. Sometimes the what if is comforting; other times, it can bring tremendous pain. But the thing is, I feel like maybe we are all just stumbling along, chasing our shadows along some broken path, the sun to our backs. Maybe Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is spot on. Maybe we are all just staring at a wall of what we think our lives should look like. (I seriously can't help waxing all existential) But really, suppose all of the what ifs were just moments we were afraid to turn around, the light of the sun too bright for our eyes to take, too scary for us to face? 

I had one moment, long ago, where turning around might have changed my entire life. And it haunts me constantly. When you are faced with a moment when you know that simply turning your head will change every thing, you tend to remember those kinds of things. You can’t just file that under “Remember When” and move on. You replay it over and over, and you reimagine every moment. Your second chances come in the form of dreams that you never want to wake up from. It sort of sits in your subconscious and peeks out sporadically, just so you know it’s still there. 

A thousand times, I have replayed that single moment. I’ve stood there in the space between what could have been and what is and evaluated how the story would end. And maybe it ended exactly as it should have. Maybe refusing to turn around was exactly what was supposed to happen. Or maybe I just think too much…both are equally possible. After all, I’ve a penchant for over-analyzation. 

In The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, there is this incredibly moving point in the story when Santiago is riding through the desert in search of his personal legend, and he has this beautiful conversation with his own heart. His heart tells him, “People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.” 

I like these lines because they speak to me on so many levels. The truth is that there have been times I was afraid to turn away from shadows and stare directly into the sun; I was afraid of what might happen. I’ve always been an all or nothing type of person, and I get that it takes a special kind of person to love me and accept all of my weird little idiosyncrasies. 

I’m not a woman who was built to accept the world as it is and sit in some silent disheartenment. I’m a dreamer; I admit this about myself. I see the world for the way I wish it would be, not the way it really is. And that has let me down more than a few times. The hardest part about being this kind of person is that you always imagine the “what ifs” because the dreamer knows there is never just one way the story can end. There is always, always, another.

A Christmas Story

It's early at the Altman family lake house, just before 6 am. Pretty soon, the tiny feet of my niece and nephew will be stomping down every step to see what awaits them under the tree from Santa. In the stillness of the morning, a thousand memories dance in and out of my thoughts. Four generations of my family members have enjoyed the holidays in this house. But of all of the memories and children and families who have enjoyed the magic of this house, perhaps this year will be the most precious. 

In October, an unprecedented amount of rainfall hit our beautiful state. Some reports called the systems that brought the rain "the perfect storm", others called it the 1000 year's flood. So many people lost their entire homes and their livelihoods. It was truly one of the most devastating storms our state had experienced in decades, maybe centuries. 

When the rains came, the lakes and rivers began to rise. The rivers exceed flood stages with remarkable speed and did not crest for days. Some saw the river levels rise 6 to 7 feet or more above flood stage. In our family's lake house, the water rose over 2 feet into the second level of our house. Everything was left in ruin. When the waters receded, we found a thick layer of river mud covering everything. The hardwood floors were warped along with the walls, cabinets, all furniture, and many of the items from the first level were floating down the Black River somewhere. It seemed like there was no hope left for our family home. 

The clean-up began the week residents were allowed to return. But we all knew that celebrating Christmas at our house was completely out of the question. There just wasn't enough time to fix all of the devastation the storm had caused. The house sat in complete disrepair. 

And then something happened.

For weeks, our family discussed where we would have our annual Christmas gathering. The storm had already taken so much from us, but we were not going to let it force our family to be separated during the holidays. 

About a week ago, my parents told me that they had cleaned and treated the house enough that we could sleep there. My mama told me that she had found aero beds for the children to sleep on downstairs. She even told me to bring my crockpot so that we could cook all of our food in it as there were no appliances in the house. 

When I arrived Christmas Eve, expecting the house to be barren, I walked into a beautiful home complete with comfy sofas and chairs, our family's dining table they had managed to save, new area rugs, new appliance that had just been delivered the day before...and our beautiful family Christmas tree. My parents were determined that our family would have Christmas in our house just as we always had. 

Immediately, I started to cry. This was their gift to us. My daddy had spent all of those weeks ripping out cabinets, wet insulation, warped flooring, hauling off all of the destroyed furniture and appliance. He had worked every day since the waters receded to save our house. And my mama had placed and ordered every piece of furniture to bring our house back to the way we remembered it. And they did all of this for us. 

My mama and daddy worked for weeks to give our family the most precious gift of all. They gave us our house back. They gave us back our first Christmases, our late night back porch talks, our laughs around the dinner table. They took the broken and destroyed and they put it all back together again. And all at once I realized, this is exactly what love looks like. When all hope seems lost, when the broken things are so scattered and torn apart that you think you will never find them again, that is when love steps in and finds the hope in the hopeless. Love finds the pieces and puts them all back together again. This is exactly what love looks like. Thank you, Mama and Daddy, for finding all the pieces and putting them back together again. 

Merry Christmas to all and may all of your pieces find their way home.

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Finding Peace in the Clutter

I have a friend who, well, let’s just say she is really into the art of homesteading. This woman can literally do just about anything. Anyway, a few months (maybe years) ago she posted a question asking if anyone had done the “KonMari clean.” I’m going be honest here. I really thought to myself, “Please don’t let this be breast milk cookies or baked placenta tablets recipes!” I Googled this “KonMari” clean and read about how “spiritually” and “emotionally” cleansing it was. The brief description, which was under a picture of an empty bookshelf, had me thinking that it was, indeed, some gluten-free, homeopathic wizardry she had read. I immediately dismissed it and moved on to find some more “I’m-drowning-in-self-pity” memes to post. 

Pause. 

Fast forward to last week. 

I was walking down the hall before school Thursday morning humming “Antidote”, by Travis Scott (I feel like you should know that at this moment I am listening to Clare de Lune and I’m wearing an Aerosmith t-shirt…which can only mean that I have an eclectic taste in music.) Anyway, so here I am walking down the hall humming and a favorite teacher friend of mine stops me. I give a ubiquitous smile and cheerful “good morning.” He stops me and says, “I need to tell you something, and I really mean this. You have looked so much happier in the past few weeks than I have seen you look in months.” I was taken aback. After a second, I found the words I wanted share with him. “Thank you Mr. B. I earnestly mean that. Thank you. I feel happier than I have in years.” He gave me a gentle, understanding smile and said, “I can see that.” 

Here is the truth: I spent the last three years in a very unhappy place. Emotionally and spiritually, my well was completely dry. It’s hard to explain this and honestly, a bit disconcerting to admit. I mean who truly wants to tell anyone, aside from a therapist, that they are barely holding their head above water? A combination of my husband starting his own business and my grandmother passing away sent me into an emotional downward spiral. And I stayed there for three years with only brief periods of balance. I filled my life with keepsakes in any and every form I could from my grandmother’s house. I filled my closet with clothes for someone I never wanted to be. (This is so embarrassing) It was a beautiful closet for a person that just didn’t live here or in me and never did and never would. There were designer shoes and handbags stacked to the ceiling. Clothes hung neatly on beautiful wooden hangers. And all other accoutrements of an educated, self-confident, and financially secure woman. Then (check this plot twist out) I literally closed the damn door and never went in there again. 

This wasn't just an activity I did for my wardrobe. I was kind enough to share my self-depreciating activities with the rest of the house, too. I filled every cabinet with every possible piece of anything I was given from my grandmother’s house. And then…AND THEN!!! 

I never used those either! 

BOOM! 

I stacked my emotional downward spiral on every shelf in my house like books. During those three years, I had a few friends try to tell me that I was losing it. One was nice enough to say it out loud (like, in those exact words), and another actually spent the entire day with me cleaning up because I seriously had just stopped caring if my house was clean or not. The deeper the spiral went the more I felt the need to just. not. move. 

I don’t want you to misunderstand. This wasn't an episode of “Hoarders” kind of thing. I wasn't stepping over boxes or harboring a dead animal under a pile of laundry. I just wasn't participating in my own life. I felt like I just didn’t want to be me for a while. Does that make sense? I really just wanted to walk out of the door and keep going until I was far away from everything.

And this is how my life sluggishly moved along until my friend (the one I mentioned like 5 paragraphs ago) posed her question. 

It took me almost 6 months (and the loss of about 60 lbs, a slightly related goal) before I even began researching this “KonMari” clean thing. All of the testimonials and the reading material available online praised the life changing nature of the process and how it would “open your life to positive change.” Pfft! Whatever. How could cleaning out a damn photo album or thanking a t-shirt before you toss it help you “spiritually" and "emotionally” grow? Those who know me well can tell you that I am all about existentialism and seeking self-actualization, BUT there is no way in hell that thanking your trash is going to make you a better person. Reluctantly, I read on, and I kept reading until I finally thought to myself, “Look, you have tried everything else. Why the hell not? What’s the worse possible thing that can happen? You start and then give up and stream old episodes of Daria?” 

To get everyone on board, I sat on the porch with my husband and tried, without laughing, to explain the whole KonMari thing. I’m pretty sure he just agreed to try it so our house would be cleaned and he could finally get some space in the closet I’d confiscated and then closed down years ago. Whatever his reason, we agreed to start Thanksgiving weekend. We sat the kids down, and I explained the process (amidst their giggles and doubts). We decided to do the clean in 3 phases. Phase One would be the entire downstairs, Phase Two was the entire upstairs, and Phase Three was the pool house, shed, and yard. To expedite the process, my husband and I sorted through clothing the weekend before Phase One was due to begin. And this is where things got real…QUICK! 

First, I opened my closet and stood before the artifacts of the person I thought I was supposed to be. These were the belongings of a person who never was and never existed. For the love of all that is holy, the tags were still on some of the damned things! Section by section, I brought each down to “base camp” (the living room) and I picked through each item, held it, and considered if it made me happy, if it made me feel joy, if it brought me peace. Some things were easier than others. Some. . .well, as I am writing this, it still brings tears to my eyes. Perhaps the hardest for me to let go of were my grandmother’s night gowns. I held each against my face and inhaled deeply, searching for her scent or something that would bring her back to me. But it wasn’t there; she wasn’t there. I allowed myself to keep one; I chose the burgundy one that I most clearly remember her wearing. All of the others were placed in the donation pile. Let me tell you, I had to fight each day not to go out and dig through the bags to rescue them. And that alone almost made me stop the clean all together. 

The hurdles came in quick succession. I decided to tackle what I knew would be the most emotionally taxing first. The family photos brought many tears and lots of laughter. We chose a large shoe box and decided that we would only save what would fit in that box. Each duplicate, blurry, or random picture was thrown away. Many of the photos of my babies lives sat in the discard pile. I wanted desperately to find reasons to save meaningless items, like the cords used in the hospital that monitored each of my children. On more than one occasion, I became inconsolable when reminiscing over old photographs and random keepsakes . It is strange how the pictures or tokens from our past can have that effect on us when we are faced with never seeing them again, yet they spend years tucked away in books or boxes or drawers. I held each and asked myself the same series of questions I had with my clothing. Finally, after 3 hours, I closed the lid on the shoebox of what remained of our family photos. 

Equally emotional were the books. (I can feel the English major in my head condemning me to Hell for this) Just say it…Okay! I did it! I got rid of books! Tons and TONS of books! I took them from my bookshelves, I picked out the ones I loved and the ones that had the greatest impact on my life, and all of the others went to the donation pile! (That was harder than I thought it would be to admit.) 

Each room had its own emotional hurdles. At one point, I swear I heard my grandmother begging me to keep all of her antiquated tupperware. (she seemed really mad, so I kept like 4. I mean, I didn’t want to piss her off after the night gown incident) Every cabinet was emptied and every item evaluated for its usefulness. Mix-matched cups, plates, pots, and pans were tossed. If it wasn’t being used, then it went. And after 3 excruciatingly emotional days, Phase One was done. 

Here is the strange part: Phase One was really the hardest part. After Phase One, we zipped through the other phases. Nothing was spared! If you didn’t make us happy or make us feel at peace, then you had to get the hell out! We tossed and cleaned and tossed some more. We reorganized and then evicted over 45 large (industrial size…seriously…we got them from a landscape service) bags of trash, 13 large bags of donations, and 5 pieces of furniture. The staggering amount of “things” we had collected over the years was remarkable. We couldn't believe that five people could accumulate so many useless things. All of these things that we had emotionally attached ourselves to had rendered us stagnate. We couldn’t find peace because it was buried under the bullshit of the histories we keep in our physical and emotional spaces.

Rewind. 

So I am walking down the hall, and I’m humming to myself, “don’t you open up that window, don’t you let out that antidote.” Mr. B stops me and and tells me he thinks I look happier than I have in months. 

Okay, here we go: 

My sofas don't match my area rugs or my throw pillows or my ottoman or my window treatments, and I’ve never been happier about that.  My book shelves are thinner but what is left are beautiful words written in eloquent sentences that have each changed my life. My record collection is sitting where I can use it every day, and I can tell you the exact number of every piece of dinnerware in my cabinet. My closet, which is now shared with my husband, is filled with only clothes that I absolutely love. (which translates to broomstick skirts, band t’s, and bohemian tunics.) 

Now, I’m not saying that I am fully committing to the whole “spiritual and emotional” change of the KonMari clean, but I can tell you this much is true: after the clean was finished, we both felt this tension lift. This feeling of anxiety and stress was just gone. The emotional weight was lifted. The only thing I feel when I come home is just…peacefulness. I feel peace. There is something calming in letting go of the burden, the guilt, the pieces, and the items of the past lives we led. And we did just that. We just let it go. 

I think the lesson here is that all things are temporary, transient. Nothing can or should last forever. Not pain or heartache, not people and definitely not the things we fill our spaces with. When we choose to let go of whatever it is that clutters our emotional, spiritual, or physical spaces, we truly do open ourselves up to new things, new experiences. It took me completely breaking down and letting go before I was able to find peace. And that is exactly what I did. I made room in my spaces. I cleaned out the years of emotional and physical clutter so that I could find the peace that was buried underneath. And surprisingly enough, happiness finally found a way in. And that’s exactly what it did, it just came right on in.

To my dear friend who posted that question, I am truly forever grateful. You have no idea how your simple question saved my life and brought me to peace. I love you.