Saturday, February 26, 2005

Do you want to go Home??

I want to go home. You know, where I came from. I live now in the Pacific Northwest. It rains a LOT. I'm a Southern boy - born and raised in Virginia, went to High School in southern Texas.

When I go home to visit, I can smell the marshes, with their sulfurous odor of decaying seashores, exposed sea mud... and I know intrinsically that the very smell flows through my veins. The smell of the wind over the ocean hitting my face. The way the sun looks right at sunset. It's like the wavelength of the rays are different... Beckoning me home.

I can deny my heritage no more than I could deny being Caucasian or red headed. Well, it used to be red :)... My mouth yearns for the taste of pulled pork barbecue, brisket done Texas style, shrimp boiled fresh from the boat, knowing they were swimming happily in the ocean only hours before.

I remember the sounds .... the splash of mullet in the channels, the lap of water on the shoreline. The look of the moon as it rose over the water. In Virginia, the rustling of trees getting ready to drop their leaves, the crunch of the ice covered puddles as I go to the bus in October/November.

Sometimes I wonder if the strength of these yearnings are not the pull of home but the wish to return to simpler times. I don't know.

What do you think?

Until our next ........

6 comments:

Patty-Jo said...

Isn't it ironic, when we're young we can't wait to go explore the world, and then one day, we just want to go home. I was born in Bellingham,WA, lived several years in San Diego, CA, and eventually HAD to come home. I was never able to really put down roots anywhere, and if your roots are exposed long enough, you start to wither and die. Now I'm home and firmly planted. Unfortunately I have a son that is just as planted in Virginia! I keep hoping he'll move home, but he doesn't like the weather here any more than you do!

Jay said...

Most of it sounds lovely, but I do have one question:

what is this pulled-pork? I hear about it often enough, but I cannot imagine what you pull on pork.

madmom said...

Jay, pulled pork is simply barbequed pork that has been shredded by pulling it apart with forks. The style of barbeque in that area is usually slow cooked pork with a spicy rub or marinade cooked to tender perfection then minced or pulled and eaten w/ a spicy sauce (in North Carolina it's a vinegar based sauce), eaten on a bun or roll with coleslaw. It's really good, and all without a tomato in sight.

Anonymous said...

Either what madmom said it is - OR - it is something that you 'get by' the pork (er, pigs). You know, the old "Look at that!" and the pigs fall for it and look that way. I'm sure it's one or the other (grin).

madmom said...

But oinkly if the pigs are very slow on the uptake. Poor pigs, so sad.

B.B. said...

The weird part is, when you described the smells and sights and sounds of the ocean, I immediately thought of the Oregon coast right her *IN* the Pacific Northwest. And like PAtty-Jo, I just had to return to this region from years of living in San Diego. For me, thios is the most beautiful state in the nation, and I want to grow old here.