Memories, Mom, and Me (nos. 37 and 45)

In April, I took a day off from work and drove with my mother from Richmond, Virginia, to Lee County, Virginia — a seven-hour drive that takes you to the westernmost part of the state (I stood with pride as a 10-year-old on the spot where Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky meet). The drive used to take longer when my brother and I were younger (with strategic stops for a discovered playground or a second lunch) and before the state carved wide, straight roads through the Appalachian Mountains.

The birthplace and retirement spot of my grandfather, Lee County was the destination for several annual family treks, including Christmas and summer vacation. It’s a place that has special resonance in my life and my memories, its windy roads (they’re still there, though some are avoidable), the deep quiet of star-filled night skies, the farm fields ripe for make-believe afternoons, the hard church pews and twangy hymns, the county library on a hot summer afternoon. And my grandfather, of course – a strong and soft, pious yet playful, wise man who raised my mother and aunt after his only wife died when my mother was only three.

When my mother told me that she was planning to do a book reading for her fourth book at the Lee County library in April, I instantly, perhaps breathlessly, suggested I could accompany her. How special it was to be able to share those three days together.

The drive was uneventful, short of passing through an area on I-81 where a tornado had blazed through some days before, and provided for long conversations about marriage, families, stages of life, good books, and the like.

Mom at reading with photograph of my grandmother

As we arrived in Lee County, my mother drove below the speed limit as we passed through the town of Jonesville, and I pointed out each of my favorite homes, the pharmacy where we’d sat for cokes and grilled cheese sandwiches, the laundromat where I’d discovered the art of placing quarters into thundering dryers, and the pull-off road to the middle school where I’d first sat behind a steering wheel and shrieked as a I “steered” my yelling father and our family minivan off the road and toward a ditch of trees.

When we reached my grandfather’s home (built by his grandfather), we pulled into the driveway to find the family away with no chance to step inside (we did the next day, though, after a hike up the hill to take in the farmland…and I walked through the familiar, though changed, farmhouse, recalling where the Christmas tree, the old wood-burning kitchen stove, the oversized freezer filled with garden-grown fruits and vegetables, and the on and on used to be).  The soft light of the sunset, the cicadas’ rhythmic song, and the not-too-distant mountains: they had been waiting more than a decade to welcome me back.  (At certain stages of my life, I’d mourn the moment when it was time to load up and pile into our car to make the drive back to Richmond.  Once, while I cried into my grandfather’s wizened neck, he softly noted that I couldn’t come back if I didn’t leave.)

View of Pa's home from the hill

The rest of the weekend: A dinner out with the lovely family friend and cousin with whom we stayed, the editor of the local newspaper, and the wife of my grandfather’s doctor (a spitfire, civil rights lawyer) made for lively conversation. The following day, we walked quietly in my family cemetery, stopping to visit those we remembered, the longest pause at my grandparents’ grave (in the 1990s, I pointed out to Pa that he had prematurely carved in the “19″ for his death year).  The event at the library was well-attended, and the comments and questions following my mother’s reading reflected a genuine appreciation for the story she had told.

Afterwards, a good number of women approached me and told me how lucky I was to share the weekend with my mother and to have the opportunity to know so much about her through her book. I could not agree more.

In front of Pa's home