fixin' to git
Otherwise known as "getting ready to go" -- I head off to my southern homeland Thursday morning bright and early and I won't have internet access for a whole long week. Bummer. I'll be staying seven days and seven nights in the luxurious guest bedroom at my grandmother's house, which is nestled in the loving cradle of Wolffork Valley in Rabun Gap, Georgia, just twenty-odd miles away from my birthplace, Toccoa.
The bedroom isn't actually so luxurious, but the bed is pretty comfy and it's where I always stay when I visit. The room has red and grey carpet in a backgammon-board pattern that I'm sure has been there since my two aunt's shared that room in the 60's. It also has a warped mirror directly across from the bed, which always creeps me out a little bit, and two framed pictures of kittens hanging on the wall that I gave my grandmother for Christmas probably twenty years ago. On the dresser there's an old, dingy picture cube with a pic of my dad at 18 in his airforce uniform and a pic of my aunt Carla standing in front of an old Rambler in the front yard when she was about fifteen. Nearby, there's a double frame that holds a picture of my cousin Valerie on one side and me on the other. It's deceptive, because though I am several years older than Valerie, we are about the same age in the pictures (10-ish) and this pairing makes us look like contemporaries. Anyway, it's a terrible picture of me, pre-braces, and I've got the giant gap between my two front teeth that I am now so happy to be rid of. I have begged my grandmother to replace that picture with another, more recent picture, but she loves it. For years, when I would come visit, I would cut out a face from a magazine and tape it over my face in that picture. It would usually take weeks for my grandmother to notice, but when she finally did, she would call me and laugh about it and call me a monkey. I love her.
Unfortunately, she's not the only person I'll be visiting in Georgia. My dad and stepmother are just up the hill from my grandmother and I'll have to put in my share of time with them, as much as I'd rather just hang out with Margie all seven days. I'll get to see my brother too, which is good, and maybe some other relatives will drop by. There are tons of aunts and uncles living nearby, tons of cousins too, who may or may not turn up while I'm visiting. They're all pretty ok. As "ok" as a bunch of white, conservative, racist, homophobic, fundamentalist christians can be. I'm like a well-intentioned alien dropped in amongst them. They're nice to me and somewhere deep down they love me, even though they suspect we wouldn't get along if we actually talked about anything. So we don't really talk about anything and that's the best compromise we've managed to come up with.
Anyway, wish me luck. I may or may not be on again before I leave. If not, I'll fill you in on all the fun times when I get back on the 14th. Ciao.
The bedroom isn't actually so luxurious, but the bed is pretty comfy and it's where I always stay when I visit. The room has red and grey carpet in a backgammon-board pattern that I'm sure has been there since my two aunt's shared that room in the 60's. It also has a warped mirror directly across from the bed, which always creeps me out a little bit, and two framed pictures of kittens hanging on the wall that I gave my grandmother for Christmas probably twenty years ago. On the dresser there's an old, dingy picture cube with a pic of my dad at 18 in his airforce uniform and a pic of my aunt Carla standing in front of an old Rambler in the front yard when she was about fifteen. Nearby, there's a double frame that holds a picture of my cousin Valerie on one side and me on the other. It's deceptive, because though I am several years older than Valerie, we are about the same age in the pictures (10-ish) and this pairing makes us look like contemporaries. Anyway, it's a terrible picture of me, pre-braces, and I've got the giant gap between my two front teeth that I am now so happy to be rid of. I have begged my grandmother to replace that picture with another, more recent picture, but she loves it. For years, when I would come visit, I would cut out a face from a magazine and tape it over my face in that picture. It would usually take weeks for my grandmother to notice, but when she finally did, she would call me and laugh about it and call me a monkey. I love her.
Unfortunately, she's not the only person I'll be visiting in Georgia. My dad and stepmother are just up the hill from my grandmother and I'll have to put in my share of time with them, as much as I'd rather just hang out with Margie all seven days. I'll get to see my brother too, which is good, and maybe some other relatives will drop by. There are tons of aunts and uncles living nearby, tons of cousins too, who may or may not turn up while I'm visiting. They're all pretty ok. As "ok" as a bunch of white, conservative, racist, homophobic, fundamentalist christians can be. I'm like a well-intentioned alien dropped in amongst them. They're nice to me and somewhere deep down they love me, even though they suspect we wouldn't get along if we actually talked about anything. So we don't really talk about anything and that's the best compromise we've managed to come up with.
Anyway, wish me luck. I may or may not be on again before I leave. If not, I'll fill you in on all the fun times when I get back on the 14th. Ciao.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 9:40 PM
1 Comments:
Have a great trip! I understand the family ambivalence (my mother's family is Southern and to them, I'm always the Yankee).
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