Home

The road to Southeast Georgia is a long one from my home in Nor thwe s t Georgia. Still, I hear its call, and I feel its pull. As the end of November settles across the land known for its sweet onions and towering pines, I find myself thinking about “home” and what “home” actually means. I think about the people I have loved in my life and the houses that have stood since the beginning of time — well, the beginning of my time, that is.

When I was growing up in the sixties, seventies and eighties in the middle part of the state, my family always made the pilgrimage to my grandparents’ farms in Southeast Georgia. Grandmother and Papa Lanier (Maggie and Henry) lived outside of Metter on a dirt road, and Grandmother Jarriel (Ona) lived near Collins and Cobbtown in an equally rural area. Our visits to my parents’ homelands were part of our annual holiday tradition, and I am thankful for all of those memories. And somewhere along the way, their homelands became my homeland, as well. I am deeply connected to those places.

But my grandparents have been gone a long, long time. Then there was a span of years when our large family gathered in Bonaire, where I grew up, during the weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But like other families, ours is a family in transition, and as a result, the holidays will look a little different for us this year. Our family is particularly spread out, with family members congregating with the other sides of their families and some living in far away places. As a result, we won’t all sit down together at the same time this year. Some of us will go home for Thanksgiving Day, and others will go home a few days later.

Also, Mom’s decision to sell the family home earlier this year was a sound and practical one, but still, we won’t be pulling up into the driveway of my fondest memories — the driveway where I mastered riding my bike and rollerskating; where my sister stomped her feet, clapped and practiced her cheers; and where my brother worked on his car. Instead, each of us will visit Mom’s Ohoopee home, where she shared a life with my stepfather, Johnny Collins.

That house is not where I grew up, yet the love is still there. Stepping inside, the air will be thick with the fragrance of little green peas, turkey, cornbread dressing, and pecan pie — the kind of cooking that makes fancy restaurant meals taste like cardboard and pretense. Mom will be tired and frazzled from standing in the kitchen so much, cooking up a storm. Still, she will greet all who walk into her house with a smile, a hug around the neck and a look of relief — relief that each of us are off the road and some of her chicks have returned to the nest.

Again, it’s different now. Before, on Thanksgiving, family members gathered like moths to a flame around the television, whooping and hollering for their favorite football teams to be victorious. In the kitchen, women (including me) typically stirred steaming pots and sprayed Pyrex dishes with Pam. We took head counts and set tables to accommodate the crowd who had congregated to eat. We made two batches of tea — one sweetened and poured into a milk jug and the other unsweetened and poured into a small glass pitcher. When it was finally time to eat, there wasn’t enough counter space to place all the food we had to serve.

Desserts were placed on the dining room table — two pecan pies, a dish of “the green congealed stuff,” and a multilayered coconut cake that Aunt Monteen made for us for sever- continued from page

al consecutive years, placed in a clear glass pedestal dish for all of us to admire.

Today, the food will be a little less elaborate and abundant. Around the table, the faces will be a little more lined and weathered, the hair a little thinner and grayer, but the laughs will be just as deep. And just like Thanksgivings of the past, everyone will be thankful for family and fellowship, and everyone will eat too much — feeling miserable until the following day, when leftovers will be served up again with love and care.

So to me, this is what going home, or coming home, means. It’s not just the food, though Lord knows I love casseroles, cakes and cornbread. It’s not just the place, though the dirt roads of Candler, Tattnall, and Toombs Counties run through my veins, just as the paved roads of Houston County do. Home is where time just seems to stop. It’s the place where love fills every room like Sunday morning sunshine. Home is where each homecoming feels both new and ancient, as familiar as Mom’s voice calling me in for supper.

No matter how far I roam, home is where my heart never truly leaves, where love keeps the porch light burning, and where Thanksgiving and Christmas taste like my mother’s and grandmothers’ home cooking and sound like their melodious laughter. Home is where I can finally let out a big breath — one I didn’t even realize I was holding. Home is just home.