Post 15: Home Again

I told you about that, remember, John? Remember now we laughed about having a duck as a pet? And I drove you past the McCarthy house, and we walked past the dogwoods and the ponies and Aunt Virginia’s house. I showed you where we buried our pets in on the back lot. John? I can hear you perfectly. Why don’t you answer me? Kit, I know you’re there, too. Make John answer me.

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            Growing up, summer nights were magic. As the solstice approached, it meant longer days, which in our neighborhood meant an extended game of Capture the Flag, Hide and Seek, and Kick the Can. We ran through the yards of our neighbors with no particular understanding of lot lines. We did, however, learn respect for freshly planted begonia beds (the widow Mrs. Baxter) and reseeded lawns in the spring (watchful Mr. Wellton). We learned boundaries that defied fences, stepping carefully as needed. Mostly. While we slept in a particular house with our families, we traversed with abandon the large expanse of land that felt like it was ours. It was unspoken: it was our neighborhood.

            We chased fireflies, which we called lightning bugs. The other neighborhood kids included my older cousins (and de facto big brothers) David and Denton Davis who, I’m certain, taught me the lightning bug ritual. We subjected these magical insects to one of two tortures. The first was a brief life in captivity in an old mayonnaise jar with a few blades of grass to snack on. In deference to life, we punched holes in the jar lids. The idea was to amass enough lightning bugs in order to gain the luminescence of a lantern. This never happened.

The alternative was instant death in service of fashion, of sorts. In this version, we pinched off the “lantern” part of the bug—the golden, illuminated behind--at the precise peak of brightness. Then, with the dexterity of a jeweler cleaving a rare yellow diamond, we affixed the lantern (with its remaining natural adhesive juices) to a blade of grass and tied it carefully around our waiting finger, completing an amazing lightning bug “ring.” Looking back, we amused ourselves with this cruel yet innocent pastime for hundreds of nights over a multitude of sticky summers. The darker the night, the more remarkable was the light from the bug. It never got old.

            Some fifty years later, I returned to my hometown with my husband John.

We were on a mission: for John and my mother to meet. As of spring, 2001, we had been seeing each other for all of ten months, and now it was time. As John put it, “No one could be as nice as you are.” John, a native Californian, had never really spent a lot of time with a true Southerner. And he certainly didn’t hold any true Southern ladies in his acquaintance. A least not until now.

            After meeting my mother, Elizabeth, he understood.

            My mother was one of the quietly measured and elegant Southern women who never raised her voice in conversation, never yelled to make her point or to worm her way into the fray. There was almost never any need. Unless you threatened her children or her animals, Mama made her point with an economy of words and a calm, genuine smile. She listened well and was never in a hurry to make her point. There would always be time. Sometimes, with enough time, the more loquacious members of a group would make Mama’s point for her. And even if her point was never made, no matter. It was of no importance to make sure that others knew you were right when you knew you were right. That satisfaction was enough.

            It was just the three of us during that visit. My father had died several years earlier, leaving my mother incredibly sad, but not broken.

After spending a few nights in the house in which I was raised and, more importantly, with my remarkable mama, John understood a lot more about me and about why I navigated the world the way I did. John experienced a crash course in Southern: mannerisms and manners, food, architecture, dreams, and wishes. He was introduced to the importance of the Southern family, along with the rituals, myths, lies, legends, and exaggerations that were used to hold the fabric of a family’s heritage together. John, as usual, was a quick study, masterfully ignoring inconsistencies in family stories told and retold by a set of colorful aunts, as well as a group of politely curious and mostly detached cousins.

The cousins, some of the distant ones in particular, offered a range of responses to my clearly announced relationship with John, from, “Well, isn’t that wonderful. I approve,” to vacant, slightly puzzled stares perched over icebox smiles. John was an amazing sport. Mama smiled patiently as carefully cultivated family manners iced over their barely disguised judgments of her gay and only son, all unfolding in real time.

Afterwards, over cocktails, as I related the “I approve” comment that had emerged from my nitwit, Bible-beating second cousin Viola, Mama smiled. “You can’t hold her to that. She simply—emphasis on simple—can’t help it. All in all, I think everyone behaved nicely. Finish your drinks. We have a dinner reservation at six. Aren’t you hungry?”

            And so the visit went. John not only met aunts and cousins from both sides of the family, but we ran into childhood friends, elementary school teachers, and neighborhood fixtures. They all thought he was charming.

He confided in me on day three that he was overwhelmed.

So, we took a break with a leisurely drive up the Shenandoah Valley. Mama provided commentary from the back seat. She punctuated the sights with bits of history from her marriage to my father, along with stories of parties, old friends, and the joys and losses that come with eighty-plus years of living within the same fifty-mile radius of your birth. John took it all in. I smiled at gentle stories I had heard most of my life, glad that Mama would share them with the man I had fallen in love with.

            The night before we were to leave, we enjoyed cocktails and a typically rich Southern meal of pork chops, milk pan gravy, mashed potatoes, green pole beans, fresh squash, pickled beets, sliced homegrown tomatoes, and homemade apple pie from my Aunt Camille’s sinful recipe. Afterwards, we sat on the front porch and talked easily about not much of anything, the way people can do when they’re uncomfortably full, but comfortable with each other.

Daylight was just about gone, and Mama was finishing a story about her high school days when she and her sister Virginia backed the family convertible under a low-lying elm limb and “tore the canvas roof clear off.” In mid-chuckle, John stopped, pointed out into the yard’s receding light, and asked, “What’s that?” Not sure what he was pointing to, I squinted and scanned the yard. He asked again, “Those, there! The yellow blinking!”

           “Those,” I replied, “are lightning bugs.”

           “You mean fireflies?”

“Same thing. Genuine lightning bugs.”

Earlier in the week, on the plane ride from San Francisco, John admitted he had never seen fireflies and hoped we would “have some” in Virginia this trip. I assured him that it was likely that some would appear. Now, I watched an adult being carried back to the same age of wonder that must have enveloped me as a child, mesmerized by the blink, off, blink, off, blink, seemingly suspended in a silent, harmless swarm around him.

John walked slowly out into the yard, carefully at first, fascinated but wary not to “scare them off” he said later. He reached the middle of our large front lawn and was engulfed in a silent, floating, blinking cloud, first light and then dark, all in a sequence that was both random and beautiful. He leaned back and looked upward to take in the whole spectacle. They put on a wonderful show.

Awe-struck, John twirled slowly around like a child, straining to take in every vantage point of what appeared to be a growing symphony of light. Mama and I watched the spectacle from the porch in silence. I turned and smiled at her and, smiling back, she took my hand.

  As the last daylight vanished and the illumination of the lightning bugs reached its zenith, one by one they went out. Just as they had come, they were gone.

“Where’d they go?” John was disappointed. The show was over.

“Home,” my mother said quietly. “Home.”

“Will they come back?” John asked.

“Not tonight. But they like warm summer nights, at dusk. I’m glad you got to see them.”

“Me, too, Mrs. Carter.”

“Elizabeth.”

“Me, too. Elizabeth.”

Over the years, we returned to my childhood home to spend vacations and holidays with my mother, who lived there until she died at age ninety-two. We saw family members and lightning bugs with regularity on those visits. It was time we would never reclaim, and time that I’m glad we had. John got to see the South with all its wonderful peculiarities. And despite what they say, for a little while, I got to go home again.