I’ve just returned from an almost perfect week’s trip to visit relatives in South Carolina and to paddle with friends in North Carolina. (The only "unperfect" part was too much time on the road: I got lost in Asheville on the way to Bryson City [Next time I will have a GPS!], and then I had to detour all the way to Knoxville yesterday on the way home from Bryson City because of a truck wreck on the Ocoee road. I was just about 1/2 hour out of Chattanooga at the time!)
But back to the perfect parts of the trip. When I see mountains, I feel as if I’ve come home. I saw my first mountains on this trip as I head toward Columbia, SC. As a matter of fact, I stopped for my first night in the midst of them in North Asheville.
The next morning as I traveled on, stopping at Waffle House to get cheese & eggs and a waffle in a small town near Spartanburg, SC, I experienced true southern friendliness. The ladies in the booth next to me conversed with me the whole time as I ate, wished me a good trip, and waved to me as I drove away.
After getting lost in Columbia for a short time, I arrived at my Aunt Sandra's home. She had moved into a lovely place--a patio or garden house--with a screened-in porch and a perfect little piece of nature for a backyard. The cathedral window in her terracotta dining room looked out over the backyard, and even her spacious blue bedroom had a door that led to the screened-in porch. The beautiful guest bedroom reminded me of a bed-and-breakfast type bedroom with vintage furniture and a vintage quilt folded on the bottom of the bed. I knew that I would sleep well there, and I did.
Aunt Sandra (who is only four years older than I) and I spent the first few hours catching up and reminiscing. Sandra is the youngest of my father’s eight siblings. My father is the second oldest. There is this wonderful picture of all of the Drawdy children on her hall wall, with my father in his mid-twenties holding the then three-year-old Sandra in his arms.
That evening the Drawdys began to gather at Sandra’s for a dinner. There were Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Phil, both rather dapper in their middle and early 70s, and Aunt Ellen, amazingly young at 82 or 3. There were cousins Judi and her husband Lynwood and grandson Brayden, cousins Chris and Steven and Butch, all around Sandra’s dining room table for a SC barbecue. Delicious. But more than the food, I feasted my eyes on the people and enjoyed their conversations, family stories, and good humor.
The next morning Sandra and Bonnie and I went on a walk on the Congaree River greenway. It was shady and cool, and sun danced off the water. At the trail’s end, we sat for a goodish while, talking and watching the ducks and geese dabble in the water. I was realizing that this visit with my father’s family, like writing my memoirs, was healing. It felt comforting, and I did not feel like that odd man out, as I had in the past. Instead, I felt the genuine love and warmth and comradery of family, and understood, perhaps for the first time, the meaning of the word family.
Having worked up a good appetite on our walk, we returned to Sandra’s home for a lunch of those fabulous BBQ left-overs. And then with sweet memories of family in my heart, I drove back to Asheville, and on to Bryson City, NC, (another name for paradise!) for a weekend of paddling with friends.
To be continued . . . in North Carolina!
I clicked over from your daughter's blog today, and have read a few pages back in your archives. I just want to tell you that I think this is wonderful! I think it's important to know all the parts of the family story--the good, the bad, and the ugly. My family tends to not talk about the difficult parts of our story, but recently my Grandpa had my great-grandfather's self-written life story and journals bound for the family, and included the difficult things as well, which I know was hard for Grandpa, as they shed light on some potentially embaressing topics for himself. It's so valuable to me to know that my great-grandfather struggled with depression, that in the 1950s, his industry (ranching) was pushing out the small landholders such as himself and he found himself basically unemployed in the prosperous 1950s, that he and my great-grandmother struggled with infertility, as well as to know the blessings in his life (it was especially neat to read the journal entry for the day my father was born). My great-grandfather died before I was born, and his book is the only personal connection I have with him.
ReplyDeleteI can get very long-winded, but I just want to say that I hope your family recognizes the blessing these memiors are and will be to future generations, and encourage you to get them printed and bound for posterity. Blogs may become obselete some day, after all. :)