southsick

Been feeling a bit sick lately.  Not physically ill, but something like homesick.  More like Southsick, or countrysick.  I guess it's not homesick because my home is here, in Chicago, where my stuff is.  I no longer have a home in Alabama except that my family is there, and that's "home" as in where the heart is.

I still love living here, but things have been getting to me in a way they haven't since moving here.  I passed a display of "sweet corn" in the grocery store last week, and almost cried.  I thought of farmers selling Silver Queen from the back of a truck on the side of the highway.  I thought of my dad's garden and biting into a fresh ear of corn grown and picked by him.  Or the rattlesnake green beans, or purple hull peas, or him out there in long sleeves and a hat in mid-July, complaining that somebody better take some of these vegetables or he was going to quit putting in such a big garden (which he never would).

The corn in the store was somehow a representation of what it means to be southern.  It brought up all the things that are easy to miss when you're not there.  I don't miss the humidity, and chuckle when folks here complain that it's sooo hot and humid outside.  I don't miss the mosquitos, or the houseflies, but the lack of those here may have something to do with being in the city and not in the 'burbs.  I do miss junebugs, and grits any time I want them, and real cornbread (although if I try I can find the makings here).  I miss the slowness of things, the quiet evenings when the tree frogs start up.  I miss digging in the dirt and mowing the yard.

I miss being aware of sirens out on the highway rather than being so used to them I don't even hear them anymore.  I miss waking up in the middle of the night to dead silence and dark.  I miss the snowcone truck that played the same slightly out-of-tune melody every evening.  I miss train whistles and the way they bend as they pass.  I miss not hearing every day that someone local was killed by gunshot.  I miss seeing my family whenever I want.

But....then on days like today, I remember why I love being here.  Why I love being in a city where happy surprises occur regularly and I can see and do things that I can't in small-city Alabama.  I can go to a festival or "taste of.." or street market any time if I so choose.  I can walk to the river and watch tourists and kayaks and water taxis cruise up and down.  I can stand on a corner on Michigan Avenue and hear 5 different languages at once.  At least I think they're all different.

I can see a 27-foot statue depicting the famous scene from "The Seven-Year Itch" with Marilyn holding her dress down while standing on a subway grate.  I can find quiet little gardens and fountains tucked away from the hordes of people, or be in the middle of the hordes enjoying a ballgame or concert or just walking the mag mile.  And I can even sit in my house and see amazing examples of architectural genius that date back over a century.

Yes, I'm a little sick for the pleasures of life that I knew for most of my years.  Sometimes I feel a little like the man in The Seven Year Itch - having an affair with the exciting, beautiful neighbor because the well-known was getting a little boring.  And like him, I'll go back, even if I have to ask forgiveness for my waywardness, my infidelity.  I'm not really leaving the South for good, I'm just having a little fling.  The South will be there when I'm ready to return, unchanged and familiar; I just hope it lets me back in.