December Heartscape

My heart is informed by my head but often is unable to believe in its logic.
The drive down the interstates to South Georgia on December 27th was long, full of traffic complications and heart overload. We were driving mama home for a few months so she could be at home for a short while, see her friends and doctors, attend to business and escape the winter cold in the mountains. Michael was pulling a trailer loaded with daddy’s pick up truck while mama and I followed in her car. The transitions in the landscapes mirrored the changes in my soul as we drove towards the flatlands of the south.
Christmas had been a wonderful crazy quilt... fun, food, laughter, crying babies off schedule, snuggling grandsons in our bed in the morning, watching impromptu hockey games played with Mommy Ann’s old canes, family portraits staged on the front porch in the soft light of a setting sun, mama’s presence, Junie B rides for the children, candlelight, the Christmas story and carols in the log barn chapel, children poring over old pictures and laughing at themselves and us, Adam and Michelle in from Memphis, Megan and Mike, Alison and David, my chicks gathered in and bumping up against one another as we settled in to being under one roof for the holiday. I began the trip wrapped in the warmth of family and fatigue.
The high country began to settle and became rolling hills. My mood down shifted into second gear, slowed and slightly sad. As mama and I traveled together, we talked and I heard stories of her youth, marriage and life with daddy and Gayle and me. These times together in the car are precious, set apart times for us to remember our shared past, the ones we loved who are no longer here in body, time to celebrate the future generations of our family, time to take a breath and survey the landscape of our lives together. Like the road we are traveling on, there are ups and downs, tears and laughter as we tell stories and remember when. Mama had someone who was listening and I had someone who has known and loved me since my life began.
As we passed through Atlanta, the city that consumed middle Georgia, the land began to flatten out again. Forsythe, Perry, Unadilla, Vienna (V long I enna), Adel and finally the Hahira exit appeared in the twilight. We drove up the artificial hill exit and began to drive along the back road towards Morven and home. Tall long leaf pines and majestic spreading water oaks provided a vertical counterpoint to the low, level, large fields of cotton stalks and peach trees. Not much had changed... a few new houses and trailers but the land is still the dominant note played in the rural part of Georgia I call homeplace. We passed over the Withlacoochee River, dark brown water and white sand shores, passed Japonica’s home and beauty shop, came to the stop sign and turned left on the Valdosta-Moultrie highway. And there it was, just as we left it, a small brick home on the left with the big green mailbox at the gate. We turned in, opened the gate and drove up to the back door. You never came in the front door unless you were really company or a stranger asking directions.
As I turned off the motor, I looked up and for one brief moment, I waited for daddy to step through the back door, smiling his lopsided grin, welcoming us to the farm. The memory was sharp and sweet. His old chair at the back door is still there and everywhere I look, I see his handwork... the four line clothesline on metal posts he welded, the pole barn in the back yard with high shelves for cats to lounge and sleep, the old camper he built parked at the back gate, the pear trees he planted. Mama and I sit for a moment suffering and savoring the memories. Then it is time to get a move on, time to unload and unlock and see what ten months absence has done to her home.
As we wipe mold from the cabinets doors, clean the sinks and tub and floors and dishes, I am running easily over the flatland of my heart, remembering and giving thanks for all that was, for all of who I was, for who my family was, and for that place on this earth that helped form my spirit and body. Hours spent planting pasture, putting up hay, building tomato growing greenhouses, feeding cows, playing with beloved cats and dogs, planting and picking and preserving garden produce, swinging on the side porch swing while reading or watching traffic go by, playing through the hymnbook on the upright piano or practicing preludes on the console organ for Sunday worship... all a part of who I now am and who I will be until I die... and my heart sings a song of praise and thanksgiving. My head is pointing out to me all the short comings of place and culture and family and church but thank God, my heart refuses to listen. I celebrate all of my life... hills and valleys, mountain tops and flat lands, the good and the not so good. It is all a gift. I choose faith and affirmation, not judgement and despair.
"For you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the land shall clap their hands." Isaiah 56:12 The long leaf pines and water oaks sang for me this week on a little farm in South Georgia, clapped their hands for joy and I heard the song the Lord was singing. I am grateful. Peggy Hester