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.