I'm here - again -
One more spring in Minnesota, South Alabama,
To come upon Lake Wobegon. Evergreen.
Old town I smell your coffee.
If I could see you one more time --
I can't stay, you know, I left so long ago,
I'm just a stranger with memories of people I knew here.
We stand around, looking at the ground.
You're the stories I've told for years and years.
That yard, the tree -- you climbed it once with me,
And we talked of cities that we'd live in someday.
I left, old friend, and now I'm back again,
Please say you missed me since I went away.
One more time that dance together,
Just you and I now, don't be shy.
This time I know I'd hear the music
If I could hold you one more time.
--Garrison Keillor
Kate and I drove down yesterday, Sunday afternoon.
So glad to be here. It's been a while.
It's no secret I love my roots - those sights and sounds and smells and places and people who shaped me.
Family, Friends, Failures and Successes.
Laughing, Talking, Crying, Gasping, Exclaiming.
Loving, Hating, Learning, Knowing.
As Kate and I got into the heart of South Alabama, which I say is just above Montgomery - I felt my breathing change. My heart lifted a bit. My soul relaxed.
Just so the reader will know, I shift back to another kind of homecoming when I get on Sand Mtn., around Rainsville - I'm going to what I know in Scottsboro, AL - what is present and real and what has shaped my adult life - married to my dear, loved and loving, and faithful Charlie - Always there to catch me in my breakdowns, always there to hear about my visits home to Evergreen - to know my lackings and my strengths - I get into North Alabama where I have been blessed with a life of loving my four girls from birth to now - where I receive my grandchildren and hug and kiss them and nurture them and my family and friends, my weeds grass, my flowers, my trees, my yard, my daily living - I love home, wherever it is.
But Evergreen is where I am/was a child and I am vulnerable and known.
I can hear Mother and Daddy's laughter and rhythms and steady paces, and there are ghosts here of my childhood - I think it's the longing we all have for our true home - eternal.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11
and
Now we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For now we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened, not that we should be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 2 Corinthians 5: 1 - 5
(knowing this scripture is about being clothed in His Life and His Righteousness and His redemption, but He did say, "I go to prepare a place for you" and it is my true home)
Evergreen Images, What I've Always Seen
Mixed with Images of my Present Life - my children and grandchildren.
Grandmother's - excuse me - Mary Ann's Marble Table
Always the Music
The Clock from Troy(daddy's home).
It chimed every hour and half hour.
Grandmother's Music Stand.
Grandmother's Portrait, she was sixteen.
Where Mother used to sit, in her room.
Her Spot.
Portraits of my children, framed in old frames.
Mary Ann's house which once was home to another Evergreen Family.
More musical images, always.
This Picasso - from his "Blue Period".
Mother and Daddy were young, newly married and wanted to "collect art".
Grandmother's pastel from her Judson College days.
Mother always said these houses reminded her of her grandmother's house.
They called her Mama Sally.
My Daddy as a very young man. He looks 14 or 15 to me.
Mother's silhouette.
And then we went to visit my aunt, Mary.
and her daughter, Melissa - my cousin.
We sat around their kitchen table.
They were asking Kate all about what she's doing now.
While they asked all about that, I meandered around Mary and John Law's house, getting some photos.
This oil portrait done for Mary and John Law of their son, Jim, who lived only 4 sweet, precious, adorable years. 1955 - 1959.
Portraits of Melissa and Mary Claire.
My youngest female cousins, Mary's 2 daughters.
Melissa is a Caterer and below......
.......is the kitchen where she prepares her meals and dishes and treats.
Her homemade rolls.
Mary's baby grand piano.
again, the music.
Perhaps more pictures tomorrow of Evergreen outside the family homes.
We did eat lunch today at a local restaurant.
Saw old faces, old friends, old acquaintances.
I always identify myself this way,
"Do you recognize me? I'm Elizabeth Wilkerson"
Because I don't always recognize everyone. I have to gaze through the years to know who they are.
