I am in denial that I am leaving the South in 2 weeks, and especially that I am leaving Nashville. I have a far more poetic post in the works, but I needed some catharsis by way of stream-of-consciousness and perhaps an introduction.
My standard line for 15 years has been that I am a “midwesterner by birth and a southerner by choice.” I once found a cocktail napkin that said, “I wasn’t born in the South but I got here as fast as I could!”. I didn’t buy those napkins. I kinda wish I had.
I was introduced to the South via Atlanta, where an old friend of my mother’s lived, and was soon further indoctrinated into southern culture when my aunt and her family moved to Charleston, which is where we have spent nearly every vacation since I was 11 or 12 (and where much of my family now lives year round).
When it came time to look for colleges, I toyed around with the idea that I would stay in the midwest for college, but the truth was, the south was calling me, and it wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Sure enough, about 20 seconds on Davidson’s campus (not an exaggeration) had me hooked, and by December 1997 I knew I would be south of the Mason-Dixon line within the year.
I spent the next 14 years of my life, with the exception of some semesters abroad and a summer at my old camp in Northern Indiana, in various southern locations. I’ve lived in towns of hefty Southern history significance: Charleston, Birmingham, Memphis, and Nashville. Not all that history is terribly pretty, but it is a worthwhile thing to know the history and see the aftermath up-close-and-personal – it’s neither as restored nor as broken as it seems.
The south is where I grew up. First kiss, first love, first house, first heartbreak, first dog, first time anyone ever called me “Dr.” and meant it… in the south. I learned how to call the emergency plumber and hang pictures and put together substantial furniture in the south.
And Nashville. Oh, Nashville. Nashville was my Mecca at 16 years old. I tried to live in Nashville several times before I finally arrived late in the evening of June 23, 2009. Nashville simply wouldn’t have me before then.
It was everything and nothing I expected. I have had surreal experiences of normal, day-to-day interactions with musicians that would have caused 16-year-old me to faint on sight and have had to employ the tacit Nashville rule that famous people are normal people whom we never ever bother on several occasions. At the same time, I still hate parking downtown and all those damn tourists and why on earth do Nashvillians drive under the speed limit ALL. THE. TIME???
But this place, more than any place, is home. It is still my Mecca, where my music (by which I mean the music I love, and most certainly NOT any kind of music I write, because I do not write music) lives and breathes and becomes – and the Ryman (which 16-year-old-me did not even know existed!) is one of my most favorite [indoor] locations in the whole world, with the smooth, wooden pews and the way they shake when the whole row keeps the beat on them and the way the room explodes with music and harmony when someone plays or better yet when the whole room sings together. It’s magical, this place.
And it is also the place where I began to understand the gospel, and grace, and gentleness toward myself. I know that may sound crazy, because have I not been a Christian since before my conscious memory? But it is true – not in the “I wasn’t saved before and now I am” way, but in the, “I had no concept of what I had been saved FROM before and how FREE I am now” way. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand the bigness and wildness of the gospel, of God’s grace. But I learned. I am learning. I learn the same thing over and over and I am grateful to my people here, in the pulpit and sitting next to me, who are willing to tell me the same things over and over again. I am grateful for real relationships with mess and awkwardness and for being given permission to have those kinds of relationships, the ones where we stand awkwardly with each other over coffee at church a dozen times before we are brave enough to ask for coffee outside of church and then we are brave enough to beg forgiveness over unintentional hurts, because that is the real way we make friends and build our families.
And so it is hard to say goodbye to this, my chosen home, this nest I have made here in the south, in Nashville, with its security and comfort and homeyness. It is hard to think about another 100 awkward cups of coffee and telling my story over and over again to those who do not yet even know I exist. But it is easier to think about those 100 cups of coffee because I know I have done it before. I am less afraid of the awkward silences and the nervous laughter and more willing to push through it, because what is on the other side is GOOD.
So I will say goodbye, and I will go, and I will try to forget my fear and remember that once, I was a midwestern girl new to the south, and I made it my home, and so will go the southern-at-heart girl back to the midwest, to make it her home once again.
Quote for the day:
“we got out of the car for air and suddenly both of us were stoned with joy to realize that in the darkness all around us was fragrant green grass and the smell of fresh manure and warm waters. ‘We’re in the South! We’ve left the winter!’ Faint daybreak illuminated green shoots by the side of the road. I took a deep breath; a locomotive howled across the darkness, mobile-bound. So were we. I took off my shirt and exulted”
? Jack Kerouac, On the Road