Going home...

Have you ever driven in the pouring rain? Try driving in the pouring rain for eight hours straight. It’s a little nerve-wracking. Especially when you have big, 18-wheelers whizzing by splashing water and debris all over your windshield. Then there are the noises coming from the back seat - the constant ringing and dinging of sounds coming from my two daughters’ Nintendo DS hand-held toys. They’re playing the game Mario Brothers against each other.
“I’m gonna win!”
“No! I am!”
They scream at each other as if they were on separate ends of a football field and not sitting right next to each other in my little car.
Throw in the continual, “I need to go to the bathroom!” and “Will you please turn up the radio? I can’t hear the music!”
In the 500 miles from Columbia, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee, I drove silently trying to keep my wits about me.
I’m vaguely aware of my mother chatting away incessantly in the passenger seat next to me. I know she’s talking because she’s excited and she wants to make sure I don’t fall asleep, but there’s little chance of that. She’s going over our schedule and all the things we will do once we arrive in our hometown while she points out all the businesses off every exit off the interstate. She really wants to stop at a Stuckeys to buy my dad a pecan log because she’s been buying them for him since he was in Vietnam. “Only a Stuckey’s pecan log will do,” she says.
Meanwhile, I’m trying my best to just tune everything out so I can focus on the road and getting there.
It’s hard to believe it’s been over three years since I’ve been to Nashville. I’ve been to distant places on the other side of the globe more frequently then I’ve been up the road to the place where I grew up and where most of my family still resides.
Ultimately, it was family that provided the incentive to make the long trip this past weekend. I really needed to see my grandparents; it’s been way too long. And as I studied my calendar and the things we’ve got going on before our family leaves the country, I discovered there weren’t many open weekends available. My daughters had a break from their weekly Upward basketball games, so my mom and I made the snap decision to jump in the car and go while we had the chance despite the nasty weather.
The tiresome trip and the drive were worthwhile. We had a jam-packed day and a half filled with visiting friends and family. First we saw my dad’s sister, Aunt Emily. She is a fun-loving, always smiling, warm-hearted individual who has a way of making everything seem cheery when she’s around. (And I’m not just saying that cause I know she’ll be reading this column.) :)
Saturday, we were able to spend the day with my grandparents, my mom’s brother, and ironically, my two cousins who are in the Marines stationed in North Carolina. (They just happened to come home on the same weekend.) They will both be shipping out to Afghanistan in the coming days, so it was especially poignant for my grandparents to have all their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren at their house at the same time for the first time in more than five years.
“Laughter” best describes our time that day. It was just a joyful occasion for us all to be together, to share what’s going on in our lives, and to recall the funnier memories of years past. My grandparents are doing great, and it made me feel so much better to have that time with them.
We even managed to have a few hours with some old friends. I feel very fortunate to have some high school friends that I still stay in touch with and try to see whenever possible. These are the kind of friends who knew you back when you had acne and braces and boy problems, but they still loved you and wanted to be around you. They’re the kind of friends who are brutally honest, and will say what you need to hear whether you like it or not. They are also the kind of people who go out of their way just to see you and hug your neck because there is no amount of time or distance that could ever separate your friendship.
Yes, I’ve got some amazing friends and family in Nashville and they were worth every bit of that difficult drive up there.
But I realized something as we began that same long trip back home on a sunny and unbelievably beautiful Sunday. Nashville will always be a very important place to me, and it will always hold a special piece of my heart, but Mississippi is now my hometown.
Driving down the interstate, as we passed the big, blue sign that says, “Welcome to Mississippi,” I heaved a sigh of relief knowing we were finally home.
There’s something refreshing about getting back to one’s roots, and I can’t help but think about how it will feel to come back to Mississippi after we’ve been gone for several years. But no matter how far from here I roam, Mississippi will always be my home. I am proud to be a Mississippi girl.
P.S. In case you wanted to know, Stuckeys no longer carries the pecan logs. We stopped seven times just to be sure. Dad, I hope it’s the thought that counts!

(published in the Columbian-Progress 02/10/11)