The Road Home

From sweet tea to cornbread, Texas is my home. Oh sure, I live in Nebraska where the   state slogan is “The Good Life” and  I admit it is a good life here in the midst of corn and soybeans and I have learned to adapt to sugar on tomatoes and syrup on cornbread, but like an expatriate living abroad, this is not my home.

During the networking opportunities at the National Society of Newspaper Columnists conference I recently attended in Grapevine, Texas, folks introduced themselves and asked where I was from. “I live in Nebraska but I’m from Texas” I’d say. It isn’t for their benefit that I’d add the “but I’m from Texas” part, it is for mine. I can’t, of course, delve deep into the desire of my heart to live where my ‘people’ live and offer a proper explanation at a networking reception so I turn to my favorite tool in my bag of tricks, humor. I simply told folks that I’m being held hostage in Nebraska by my Cornhusker husband and our six children. 

 Prior to the conference at Grapevine I traveled to East Texas to visit some of my ‘kin’. I spent one night with an uncle and aunt on my mom’s side and the next night with an uncle and aunt on my daddy’s side. 

 In Madisonville, Texas I felt as though, like the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and then finally entered the promised land, I ‘d come home. I was warmly welcomed by family that had not seen me in 17 years as they ‘hugged my neck’ and offered me sweet tea. I renewed my acquaintance with cousins I barely recalled and shared pictures of my own children. I heard stories about my mom as she grew up and I shared a couple funny ones of my own. I admitted that I was an adult before I realized that my dear Aunt Doris’ name wasn’t spelled ‘Ain’t Darce’. I went to Prayer Meeting with them and felt like family.

I enjoyed the feeling of that fine East Texas sand in my flip-flops as I got to see the brand new baby kittens and five-week-old puppies that were new to my Uncle D’s homestead. I relished the bright sun that threatened to sap my energy if I didn’t make frequent trips back into the air conditioned dimness of the house. I wandered around the house that my Uncle D built himself looking at pictures of family. I saw the graduation pictures of my cousins that had always hung in my Granny’s house. I remember seeing them on her walls. I try to imagine how it would feel to see these ‘family’ things every day; for them to be routine and not momentous occasions like they are to me. I can’t figure out how that would feel.

The next day I traveled from Madisonville to Cold Springs, Texas where I was met by my Uncle Clayton and Aunt Judy. While I had seen Uncle Clayton about eight years ago at the funeral of his brother, my Uncle Glen, I cannot recall when we were together last before that. 

When I see him for the first time on this trip I can see my daddy in him. In fact, he looks a bit like my daddy in disguise. He is my father’s youngest brother; three weeks old when my grandmother died suddenly and about six months old when he was given for adoption to a nearby family. My daddy was eight at the time. My uncle’s last name is not Jacks but that doesn’t matter. When you look at him you know he is a ‘Jacks boy’.

Uncle Clayton and his lovely wife of three years, my new Aunt Judy, had the task of taking me to visit the Jacks Cemetery in Pineland Texas. We rode in his new blue Dodge pick up truck and met up with Carolyn. I think Carolyn is my first cousin but I’m not honestly sure. We ate catfish at the Catfish Cabin in Jasper, Texas. I was born in Jasper but we don’t go visit the hospital because they probably wouldn’t remember me anyway.

At the Jacks Cemetery I visit the graves of my paternal grandparents and my infant sister, Shaun Alayne Jacks. Shaun was born the year before I was and she lived just one day. I was born the next year on the first anniversary of her death. I named my first daughter McKenzie Alayne in her memory. In 1965 my parents were the ones who took the small white casket in the back seat of their station wagon to the cemetery. Daddy and his uncle dug the hole and a pastor friend said a few words for the funeral. They could not afford a proper headstone so a metal post has marked Shaun’s grave for the past 39 years. Last year my sister and her husband bought an angel engraved granite headstone for Shaun. What a beautiful thing to do for her sister.

But Squeaky put it in the wrong place. My Uncle Clayton explained that Squeaky is the undertaker. After we stand around, me bawling, for a bit it is decided that we could likely move that headstone ourselves to the proper location. Uncle Clayton and I lift it up and carry it the short distance to where the metal post is broken over. We put Shaun’s headstone at Shaun’s grave. She would turn 40 years old this August 15^th and she is now properly honored. 

When I feel content that I’ve seen all I need to at the Jacks Cemetery we pile back into the truck and head to the King’s Cemetery in Milam where my maternal grandparents are laid to rest. I don’t know anyone else in this cemetery and it takes us a bit to locate my grandparents. I didn’t know them as well as I wish I could’ve. My Paw Paw Davidson passed away when I was pretty young but I remember he always gave us a candy bar when we visited him. 

I visited my Granny a few times and I have some great memories from those visits. I learned to tie my shoes at age four at her house. I laid out in the yard, pretending to be dead, with my cousins Mark and Carry Ann and my sister to see if we could get the Buzzards to circle us. We all had wars with prickly Sweet Gum Balls that fell from the Sweet Gum Tree. And later, the last time I visited my Granny, I caught little lizards for my then five-year-old brother. 

Mom tells me I’m a lot like her mother and I can see now that I am. She was funny and apparently I walk like her, too. 

After our tour of the cemeteries I’m taken back to Uncle Clayton’s home. He lives in a friendly neighborhood on Lake Livingston. Everyone there has golf carts that they ride around in and I get a golf cart tour. I meet several neighbors and it feels so good to be introduced proudly as ‘my niece, Jill’ rather than ‘my son/nephew Rick’s wife’. This is the family to which I belong; to which I was born.

Tears splash down my cheeks as I drive in the northbound lane of I-35 from Dallas. It is time to return to “The Good Life” of Nebraska; where I live but not where I’m from.