laura hough smith

 

To get to my hometown, we climb up the bluff from Mississippi, skirt downtown Memphis and bounce across West Memphis’ myriad of interchanges. Finally then, the road stretches out before us, the flat horizon out every window. The concrete splits the vast Delta farmland at every turn.

This is home.

I used to read a lot about having a sense of place, and after living in Vicksburg and after running countless miles along the Mississippi River in Memphis, I started to think the river was my place. But while I’m frequently awed by the river — its size, its history, its might — nothing stirs in me a sense of home, of longing, of melancholy, of belonging than those fields of farmland from Memphis to New Madrid. At New Madrid, I’m officially home. If I’m traveling alone, I can rest easy there; nothing more to worry about. If my car breaks down, I’ll be safe. People may not know me there, but they know someone in my family. I can see my cousins’ high school from the highway. At the Matthews and Kewanee exit, I’m floating.

I only get to Missouri once or twice a year, and that’s too long a stretch for me, really. In the weeks leading up to our recent trip there, I was terribly homesick for Morgan, my dad, my family and my mom’s memory.

We opted to skip the beach this year and instead spent a few days in St. Louis with Lollie with stops in Sikeston before and after the trip. Many of my childhood memories have Busch stadium as their backdrop, and we hope to create that joy for Lollie and eventually Mary Fin, too.

We ended our time in St. Louis with a ballgame at Busch Stadium, where we met my dad, his wife, Lee Ann, my sister, Morgan, and her boyfriend, Jake.  Naturally, we adults enjoyed the game much more than Lollie. She did love the cotton candy, though, and Fred Bird.

It had been 5 years since I’d been to a game, and it was so wonderful to sit next to my dad there. When Matt Holliday stepped to the plate, Dad yelled “Mash one” so loud I’m pretty sure Holliday heard him. As the next batter came up, Dad quickly followed up with a discussion explaining to me that against this pitcher, he’d bunt, step out of the batter’s box — “I’d do whatever I could to knock him off his game. He’s hot right now.”

It’s unreal how much he knows about the Cardinals and baseball in general, and it was food for my soul to sit next to him and hear all this. (By the way, Holliday did oblige, hitting an RBI single before colliding with another player at second base and leaving the game).

Afterward, we stopped in Sikeston for a couple of nights. Since most of my trips home are rushed, I took advantage of the extra night and rode down to our farm with my dad.

We rode down the same road my grandfather created on trips home from Vanderbilt law school, and all was right in my world.  As I looked out the windows of my daddy’s truck, I was struck by how solid that farm is. No matter what we do in town — our schemes, our plans, our hopes — that piece of ground doesn’t change. There is a stillness there, I think, that can settle any soul, certainly mine.

And on this day, my soul needed that because this trip home had been a little nerve-wracking. We were all a little nervous because it was my first trip home since my dad’s wedding and was my first time not to stay at our old house.  While it was sad to drive down our old street and past our old house, those worries were unfounded.

As my dad and I got out to look at a field of beans, I spotted a doe sitting dead still a few feet away. He stared for a few long seconds before turning tail and getting gone. Stunned, Dad and I laughed and walked around the field. We found the tracks of the deer and his brethren, and we admired the beans. There, I realized my home is where my people are – it is wherever I find my husband and daughters, my dad, my sister, Lee Ann and all my aunts and million cousins.

© Laura Hough Smith and laurahoughsmith, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Laura Hough Smith and laurahoughsmith with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.