"Just an old sweet song...
Comes as sweet and clear
As moonlight through the pines...
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you"
I've been away too long.
"Ya'll" doesn't slide so smoothly off my tongue.
A few days in Atlanta brought me closer, but
I feel so far away from
"arms (that) reach out to me"
and
"eyes (that) smile tenderly".
Georgia.
Home sweet home of my happiest childhood memories...
great-grandma's porch,
guitar pluckin',
swing and rocker sittin',
lightnin' bug catchin',
homemade biscuits... made by feel, a bit - a dash, poured and shaped in the wide flat metal flour bowl... I'd love to see that towel covered dish again... ready with fine ground wheat for every meal,
the old coke-a-cola clock,
feather beds,
jams, preserves,
pomegranates,
and
family, lots and lots of family,
great uncles givin' dollars to the kids who could name every cousin and their age or write a list of all their aunts and uncles...
parading cross the street to Mr. Brown's grocery (originally Mr. Bartlett's) to spend our fortune on Now and Laters, Bubble Gum, and Lemon Heads.
Sweet Coastal Georgia...
Passing Savannah, I'm almost home.
The smell of pine takes me there.
I'm homesick for the south...
azalea, camellia, and pyracantha berry bushes
dogwood, red bud, and magnolia trees
sittin' in the shade of spanish moss and giant oaks to escape the sun,
still wrapped in a blanket of humidity... I can almost feel the heaviness and am comforted.
drivin' across town from one grandma's to the other
with the windows down
past Winn Dixie and the Piggly Wiggly,
the old Presbyterian and the First Baptist,
my memory overwhelms my senses...
lovin' on necks, the smell of Avon and MaryKay,
peanut butter cookies with criss-cross fork lines,
eggs and white toast,
soda-water, coke-a-cola, a grape nehi in a glass bottle,
I could almost cry with longing for a syrupy-sweet familiar voice.
My daddy calls me a "missionary of hospitality" cause I went north.
Maybe it's time for a furlough.
I want to pull into the drive way of an old brick house and see the front door open with a flood of family. But so many are gone, and I know I'm homesick for more than Georgia. I'm homesick for "home".
I'm blessed to have had a family like mine. Simple folk. Honest, hard-working, God fearin', lovin' folk.
Oh, heaven, the hope that you are more than I can imagine fills my soul with grander dreams... of when my faith shall be my sight.
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