I have this
dilemma when people ask me where I’m from.
I honestly don’t know what to tell them. This is not because I feel that
I’m from nowhere, but because I feel I’m from two different places. I have lived in the Appy Mountains so long,
that people in the Swamps of Georgia would probably consider me as “being from”
Virginia. However, “holler rules” say
that if you weren’t born here, you’re not “from here”. It may sound harsh, but I kind of like the
tightness of the groups. I’m accepted by
both, mostly. I have some little
mountain babies so that helps with the locals; however, my family always indoctrinates
them with ideas of the “south” (aka deep south, dirty south, whichever you
prefer) so that they know their southern(er) roots. This lets me know that at least they think of
me as being from there, or at least from them.
I don’t feel this to be a disadvantage in my life. I love having two sets of roots, it makes me versatile
(as long as I stay south of the Mason Dixon line anyway). There is one thing that makes me very
homesick for my birthplace, my family. I
miss my cousins, my aunts and uncles, fresh peaches, my mom’s pecan orchard
with gorgeous old trees , and I miss my Nanny.
I so wish that I could be close to them sometimes, especially my Nanny.
I don’t know
about you, but there’s something about the women in my family, the matriarchs
specifically, that just makes me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. Where I come from, genetically speaking, the
women are the heart of the family, the men are the head, and God is the
soul. Maybe you don’t like that kind of
traditionalism, but I love it. I find it
comforting, natural, and (most importantly) biblical. These are things that are important to me in
a family unit.
Going to visit my
Nanny, my only living grandparent, reminds me over again that the woman’s place
in a family is so important. She is in
so many ways the hub of our family.
Living so far away from my relatives makes it pretty hard to be
especially close to them, but with most of my family, there’s this awesome way
that we can just pick up on conversation as if we spoke yesterday, not 6 months
ago. There’s a connectedness I feel to them, which is something we all need in
life. If you don’t know this already, the Aldridge
family is a pretty large one. My Nanny has
nine children, who all have between 2-4 children, who are in turn growing up
and having children of their own (and a few of them are old enough to do the
same). There are more than 90 of
us. I was going to do the math, but it
gets overwhelming, and honestly, I lose track even when writing it down. At last count, two years ago, there were
exactly 90, and I know of at least 5 that wouldn’t have been in that count,
maybe more (I couldn’t say for sure). It must be hard to be the hub of that many
people. She holds so much
responsibility; you see, no matter how close we are to each other or even how
often we visit Nanny, she’s just innately special to all of us. She’s the warm and fuzzy feeling we get when we
think of the word “family”.
In my mind, Nanny
is beautiful, smart, and basically the perfect wife and mother. Am I looking through some sort of smoky lens
and perfecting her? I don’t know, but I
don’t care. She’s special. I live in fear of her old age and what it is
doing to her (ie making her forgetful), and I live in fear of the day she may
leave us. I know everyone else feels
that way too, and I’ve talked with some of my cousins about it, but it made us
feel worse, so we dropped the subject.
In all of this, I’m so very much like a child. I want to cry when I think of her forgetting
things, because I want my Nanny to stay just how I imagine her, I want her to
be around to see my kids grow up, I want to scoop her up and move her in with
me so I can put her in a plastic bubble where she can’t fall and get hurt. Being so far away probably feeds this fantasy
since I do imagine her much more often than I actually see her. In other ways, it makes me treat her almost
like a child, trying to do things for her without her noticing when I’m around
or practically forcing her to go out to dinner and pick the place. I am such a practical person in so many respects,
but going to see Nanny just makes me a little nostalgic (or maybe a lot).
I used to think
of the Proverbs 31 woman as my bitter enemy.
I mean, who can live up to that kind of pressure? You have to do ALL of that to be considered a
virtuous woman for crying out loud??
Then, I went to a conference break out session about being a good hostess. The speaker pointed out that the Proverbs 31
woman did all of these things throughout her lifetime, not all at once. It became clear to me then that being the
virtuous woman was a journey, not a daily goal.
Why it didn’t occur to me (and many other women) that this woman couldn’t
have been a stay at home mom AND a working mom all at the same time, I’ll never
know. It is probably because we get
caught up in the hugeness of that list that we don’t think about the amount of
time it would take to become the master of so many traits. I guess that’s why I idolize my Nanny; I see
her towards the end of that journey, and I want to be that. However, my yearning for such will make me
focus on the end of the journey, not the blessing of travelling it.
I feel this way
about my mother too. I have seen her on
her virtuous journey much more than I did my Nanny, but it doesn’t make it any
less impressive. I then compare my place
on the virtuous journey timeline to my mother’s and then my Nanny’s, and I am
in awe of the beauty of the female role in a God centered family. The heart, the place where emotions are, the
place where comfort and acceptance are found, the place where hurt goes away,
the place where Daddy can be held up(even though he’s big and strong). Isn’t womanhood a wonderful gift?
There are times
when I think washing one more dish or changing one more poopy diaper is going
to make me scream, but what a privilege to be the heart of my little
family. I can already see in the eyes of
my children and nephews that my mom “Nana” is to them what Nanny is to me, the
Virtuous woman.
On the long ride
home from visiting my family in southern Georgia, I was thinking of how hard it
is to leave once I get down there. In
the movie, Sweet Home Alabama, Reece Witherspoon’s character says, “My life in New York works… But
then I come down here... and this fits too”.
I can relate to that idea completely.
I know my visits only consist of hanging around my Nanny’s house and not
venturing out into the real world she lives in, but I really do feel connected
to that place. I wonder more and more if
I would have that feeling if she wasn’t there.
I don’t know, but I don’t ever want to find out. Then I realized that an idea that probably
fits me better is found in To Kill A
Mockingbird. Scout is talking to
Dill about running away and says, “I wonder why Boo Radley never ran away” to
which he answers, “Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run to.” That’s the catcher for me. That is why I
think of Georgia in such a sentimental way.
I always have somewhere to run
away to, somewhere where the world I’ve built can’t find me, somewhere where
people love me just because I was born, somewhere where I can cry and complain,
somewhere where they’ll give me sweet tea and hug me when we greet and when we
part, and somewhere where I don’t have to have my hair perfect (which is good
because that is an impossible task in that humidity). Georgia is where I can run away to, or maybe
it’s Nanny’s house. My child thinks
those two ideas are the same, as do my nephews.
Georgia=Nanny’s and Nanny’s=Georgia.
Maybe they are right. I know that
no matter what I’d go visit my other relatives, but Nanny is part of my heart,
the part that keeps me walking down that virtuous woman path. My biscuits will probably always taste like
crap, and my dumplings are microscopically thicker than Nanny’s, which ruins
the whole batch, and when it comes to stains, my child bypasses me to get my
mother’s help, and she is always going to be better at throwing a get together
than me, but I’m sure in the future, I’ll have traits that my kids and
grandkids want too. Nanny’s better at me
than basically everything, as is my mother (which Princess tends to point out),
but one day, I’ll have to be the heart of a downline of descendants myself, and
what a blessing.
There’s a saying out there that you “can’t
have roots and wings”, but I don’t look at it that way. I don’t feel like a little bird that has been
groomed to fly away. Instead, I feel
more like a tree that began as a seed that fell into the ground. As I get older, my roots grow even deeper
while my branches reach higher and form their own forks. I can be grounded in the background of the
virtuous women before me, which helps me as I become the heart of a family
myself. Maybe one day, I’ll be home to
many people. I hope my example points
them to Christ as those ladies who came before me have for their children and
grandchildren.
Here’s
my prayer to all of us ladies who are or will become the heart of a family one
day:
“Dear
Father, thank You so much for giving me the responsibility of being the heart
of this family. Help me to always
remember that You are the most important member. Help me to remember how important the role of
the men who lead the family is as well.
God, walk with me down this virtuous woman path, please help me to be
strong in my journey. I want to give You
the glory for my family’s success, and I want to ask forgiveness where I’ve
failed You in my efforts. Be with my
sisters who are struggling with their place in the family unit. I lift them to You, God, because being the
heart is so wonderful, but God it can be so hard. I lift up those ladies who don’t have the
great examples that I do. Please show
them what a virtuous woman should be. We
praise you for the good and bad, God, and we acknowledge that Your will is
perfect. We love You, we love You, we love
You. Amen.”
For your viewing pleasure, I've added some pictures from our trip...
