My husband and I have lived in Mississippi for 21 years now. We had no idea just how different our Southern experience in Texas was from Mississippi. We’ve often pondered it, making an effort to slow our speech the first few years until it became more natural, and making an effort to slow our expectations at the fast food restaurants.
My middle child, Eli, has a good friend from a genuine Southern family. If we invite Selby over and he stays for dinner, then Selby may not stay for dinner again until Eli has been invited to Selby’s house and fed dinner. It doesn’t matter that Selby’s one of several young people camped out in the bonus room working on Physics homework and eating cheap take-out pizza with everyone else; the law of the South demands that hospitality be reciprocated dinner for dinner.
Eli and I were musing on this tradition in the car one day, and I said, “Selby’s mom must not understand that our family is very informal and delights in having friends over to share a meal with us anytime.”
Eli sagely replied, “You’re not quite Southern, Mom. You’re from Texas.”
I was astonished at how accurate my 17-year-old son could state the situation! All my life, I believed myself to be a Southerner. You see, I was born in Louisiana, and I was raised (by a true blue Southerner from Louisiana) from the age of one in Houston, Texas. Whenever I visited my grandparents who made a living from fishing the Ouashita River in central Louisiana, they would ask with a slow, native Southern drawl, “Nan, why do you sound like a Yankie?”
My mother, on the other hand, was definitely a Louisiana transplant in Texas. She stayed home in our little bity suburban starter house while my sister and I attended elementary school and had homemade brownies ready for us when we got back from school. She started the PTA at Meyer Elementary, and she presided over it. She hosted Bible studies in our home with potluck dinners, instructing my sister and me to teach the children who came with their parents a Bible story in our shared bedroom with a flannel board while the adults heard from their teacher in the living room.
In third grade, I moved with my family to the inner city to be closer to Dad’s work and to our church, since Mom was so heavily involved in the music ministry. After busting her tail trying to own and operate her own floral business for a few years, and starting up yet another PTA at our church’s private school, she decided to go to work at the Houston Chronicle, quickly marching her way up the ladder from a lowly secretary in HR to personal assistant to the president/publisher. As a high school kid checking in at security before heading up to the top floor to see Mom, I shared a laugh with the guards who would snicker behind their hands and tell me that she really was the one running the place. She started and directed a choir at the Chronicle, which was in high demand around town at Christmastime. In all this busyness, she played the piano for church and directed our children’s choir, which in and of itself was a full-time job! She was the one who hosted baby showers, wedding showers, and massive Christmas parties at our house and at her boss’s house! Surely, her daughters would turn out to be just as Southern as the “Little General”!
Living in Mississippi has highlighted the fact that maybe I’m not quite as Southern as I thought.
That’s OK with me. Honestly, I can love both Mississippi and Texas for all their fine cultural traditions of hospitality and generosity. I’ll have more stories to tell about Mississippi generosity and the reluctance of seriously great people to mention their own achievements in another post. The people here amaze me, and I’m honored to be a part of Mississippi’s deeply rooted society, even if I’m a bit of a wild rose outside the rusted gate of a beautiful garden full of antique flowers and tomatoes (of course)!
The year is 2020. The summer is warm, but not too warm this year! We’re in a time of self-imposed and government-encouraged quarantine. Living in isolation from church and community, I feel the need to reach out and communicate God’s love to anyone who will listen. I hope this blog will entertain someone, give me an outlet to express my observations on a Southern way of life, and most importantly, bring glory to God. I want to share His goodness and to encourage you, my reader, to focus on Him and trust Him with your life in a world full of voices, clamoring for your attention.
My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. (I John 3:18, KJV)
