Going home

Wet fall days in East Tennessee reel me in from the first raindrop to the last sniff of cool air before I close the windows at night. It feels like Kentucky. It smells like Kentucky. It looks a lot like Kentucky, but it's not Kentucky - and therein lies the beauty of it.

I have wanted to come home off and on since I left. The thing about Kentucky is that other than my grandparents, most of my memories from there are not good ones. I needed to get away. Now that I'm four hours from "home" again, I can come back more often.

I think the first time I felt comfortable in Edmonton again was the first time I realized that I never had to live there again if I didn't want to do so. It was somewhere around the time I brought Ben home for the first time and met Kathy Smith on the gravel road behind my grandparents as we walked toward the lower field. I had my boots on. I dragged him up and down the hollers that day, showing him the hidden field, the lower field, the branches and the waterfall. I was trying to show him me - what's inside me. I figured if we weren't going to work, I'd know it by the end of the day.

She slowed down in that lush green Mustang she was driving then, leaned out the window and asked in that charming way of hers, "How long y'all been sparkin'?"

Ben stood there, having no idea what she was talking about. I told her about two months, and she just grinned.

"Already brought him home, huh? Well."

I never brought many people "home." As badly as I hated living there, Edmonton and my grandparent's farm is special. Mom's is special. My brother lives there now and sometimes I walk in his kitchen and it's 1991 again. Or 1997. Or any other of what feels like a hundred years that made me who I am now.

I guess I'm nostalgic. This will be our first Jefferies family Thanksgiving without my Aunt Trish. She won't be standing in the kitchen in Ma's trailer behind the Pitts BBQ in town, ladling out dressing and laughing. We'll be in the Edmonton Senior Center because my cousin Missy and I are single-handedly doubling the family grandkid count. (Twins, twins, twins!)

I won't be going to Mom's to sleep away the turkey haze. Ben and I have made it through another year. We're still together, though this year has been harder, I think, than any year yet. I hope we get more of them.

We'll watch "It's A Wonderful Life," sometime over the long weekend, because we always do. We have since I was a baby.

Come Sunday, we'll drive south east. I'll make my dozens and dozens of Christmas cookies in a kitchen south of the Mason Dixon for the first time in ages this year. If I walk out my door, I'll be able to see the Smokies clearly. I'm not sure why any of that matters.

It just feels like home for a change. As for Kentucky, and my childhood home, I'm closer to it than I have ever been. Just close enough.

It's not that simple. Everything about our lives here is up in the air. He's unhappy, I know that. He's caught between two families and a wife that always wants her own way.

But on days like today, when it's so beautiful outside, with dripping yellow leaves and wet concrete steps, I don't worry about all that so much. I'm at peace. I'm at home. Tomorrow, I'm going to visit my old Kentucky home, and I'm actually looking forward to it. I have to believe everything will come out in the wash.

The circus sideshow

It's chilly in that mid-November in the mountains way. I can't see my breath, but my fingers are cold.

Jake has kicked off his blanket again. I've put his shoes on five times in an hour, so we've given up. When we realized it was actually chilly, and his socks came off for the fifth time, we stopped in a tourist shop and bought two Indian-print blankets for $5.99 each.

Being out with Becky again is simple. Easy. She didn't grump at me for forgetting to bring blankets as my husband would have. She just pointed to the cheesy-looking covers in the window of a shop and in we went.

Ten minutes later, we come out again with the throws, laughing so hard we can't catch our breath. My 3-year-old, Savannah, snatched a mini-flashlight off a low shelf while we were there and nonchalantly put it in the bag of newly-purchased blankets.

I put it back, admonishing her, "Hey! No stealing!"

Becky is dying, holding Lee's hand, trying to cover her giggles. "She's a crafty one! Look at her. You wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't seen her."

"But I want it!" Sav complains. "No stealing!" I say again, and Becky and Lee run outside, clutching their sides and giggle-snorting.

Becky has no kids. She has an electrician husband who is often out of work. He is Italian and cooks like Bobby Flay with darker skin and dimples, so you can't ever stay mad at him for long.

She and I are rambling through Gatlinburg on a Saturday night with all four of my rambunctious kids in tow. We've stopped at the Smoky Bear candy kitchen. They are hopped up on chocolate turtles and pecan bark. Lee, who is six, has traces of chocolate in the corners of his mouth. He's laughing, open-mouthed, at his little brother, Jake.

"Keep your blanket on!" he yell-laughs. "Mommy said you have to!"

We've done the circle down to Ripley's Aquarium and back. We've stopped in at the McDonald's with the "Restrooms are for paying customers ONLY," sign, and snuck the kids in to potty and run back out without buying anything. We are rebels.

Savannah is back in the "seat" she's had for most of this best-friends-reunited excursion. She folds herself into the basket underneath the double stroller, and watches the world going by from between my legs, chubby fingers curled over the edge, head popping up now and again. Ben would not have let her ride there. As we walk by, tourists exclaim over Tucker and Jake.

"Oh, look, twins!"

"That's at least the fifth one," Becky says. "How do you put up with this shit? I'd have knocked somebody out by now."

I laugh. "We're a circus sideshow, baby."

The same people spot Savannah, under the stroller. "Oh my gawd! There's another one!"

Becky and I dissolve into giggles again and walk faster.

We make the turn by Ripley's Believe It or Not. The little bar across the street has closed up their live music. People sit huddled around chipping picnic tables, drinking Coors Light out of the bottle and singing along to Seger's "Night Moves." Plastic Christmas lights wink in the darkness.

"I love this song," Becky says.

"Me, too," I say. We begin to sing aloud and Lee tugs at my hand, rolling his eyes, sticking a hand to his ears, the universal first-grade signal for "Shh! Stop embarrassing me, Mom!"

The sounds of the main drag are fading. We parked in a field, across from an old motel, off the beaten path. There are houses down there that people live in year round. Townies. There are dogs chained to rusting cars.

In the sudden silence, I feel oddly free. I start running, pushing the stroller at full speed. Sav is hanging onto the edge of the basket, howling in delight. Tucker starts cackling. Becky and Lee grab hands and sprint beside me. We are a half dozen crazies, sprinting down hill toward an abandoned field and our mom-van in the dark. I can see every star in the sky. I think there must be millions.

"Faster!" Lee shouts.

"See, you can run, Tanya!" Becky, who has been a runner for years, calls out to me. I'm heaving. I'm so out of shape I can barely breathe, but I don't stop. It's too fun.

Dogs wake up and start barking, their sharp woofs echoing around the field. Porch lights go on.

"We're waking up every dog in East Tennessee!" I yell.

"Who cares?" Becky yells back. Indeed. I don't, for once.

At the bottom of the hill, we start loading kids into the van. While Becky struggles with Tucker's car seat straps ("Amateur!" I taunt her), I realize Jake is missing a shoe.

"I'll go back and look for it," Becky offers. I fold the stroller flat, pulling out socks and blankets and candy boxes, as Becky wanders up the hill in her oversize "Gatlinburg - Heart of the Smokies," hoodie.

I find the shoe on the floor of the van. "You hid it, didn't you?" I ask Jake. He grins, and sucks his thumb.

"Becky," I call up to her. "We got it!" I'm waving the shoe in the air.

The kids take it up. "Becky, Becky, Miss Becky!" Lee yells.

"Benny! Beckny! We dot the schwoe!" Savannah screams.

The babies start crying. The dogs begin barking anew as Becky jogs back toward us in the darkness.

"Get in," I yell, revving the van. "Before somebody calls the cops!"

She jumps in, grabbing her seat belt, and pitching a sippy cup to Tucker over her shoulder.

"Go!" She's still laughing. The kids are yelling for candy. The van bumps along over the rough field. "Somebody is gonna call the cops," She laughs. "We're disturbing the peace!"

"Who cares?" I ask.

I don't.

- This story belongs to Tanya G. Brown. Please don't steal it.

A lesson in humility

As a writer, I've done hundreds of interviews over the years. Not thousands, because I'm not quite that old yet, but hundreds? Easily.

I'm used to subjects who revel in seeing their names in print, who adore the recognition and the "I'm somebody" feeling they get from being featured.

Since joining academia several years back, I think I've actually met more of those types than when I was a journalist. Imagine my surprise when a professor walked into my office last week and taught me what true humility means.

I featured her in the faculty section of the alumni magazine I produce for our school. She was carrying a color copy of the pages of her article, marked in a few places with a red pen. We went over a few run-of-the-mill revisions and then she pointed to this quote, which she'd circled with a deep crimson flourish:

"Judy was an ideal person for it. She knows all about To Kill A Mockingbird and all about the Bible."

She removed her glasses, sighed. "I know that's what he said," she began. "But I really would like to change it. I just don't - it doesn't - I cannot let him say that."

She was stumbling. I was intrigued. Most people jump at the chance to be referred to as an authority on any subject in print.

"I know it's what he said, or you wouldn't have written it," she said. "But I'm just not comfortable with it. Can we maybe say 'is a student of the Bible?' I just can't - I mean, it goes against humility - I study it but I cannot claim to know all about the Bible. I just can't."

I stared at her. She's one of those professors with slightly graying hair that could put her anywhere from late 40s to mid-60s. She speaks in a true East Tennessee accent - hard on her vowels and easy on consonants - if she doesn't skip them altogether. I kept looking at her, forgetting to speak, wondering how I had missed the strong air of goodness around her up to that point.

"I can talk with him if you like, make sure it's okay," she went on, when I didn't speak. "I'll send him a note. I'm sure he'll be okay with it. I just want to change that line."

Somehow, I found my voice.

"That's fine, Judy," I said. "You let him know. I'll change it. I understand."

I made a checkmark beside the circle and smiled at her.

She smiled back.

Beginning

“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

~ Ernest Hemingway

If you are here by way of my other blog, I must warn you that this one will be nothing like that.

My writing is important to me. In the mix of kids, bills, job, pets, family and health, it can - and often has - gotten lost. This blog will be my little way of trying to remind myself to keep at it. I may post some original work here, but more likely it will be observations on the process or inspiring bits to keep us all going.

I chose the title from Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," published posthumously in 1964. If you haven't read it, and you want to write well one day, you should. It's about his time in Paris in the 1920s, but it contains several truths about writing that have stuck with me from the moment I read them. It's a book that I think is helpful to writers, even if you aren't particularly fond of Hemingway's style.

Here's hoping I can keep myself in the deep part of the well.

Join me?

Note: Background photo is mine - taken in Cherokee National Forest, just past Bald River Falls, on Labor Day weekend, 2010.