MEMORIES KiKi from July 3, 2010 Nice

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Georgia

Leaving this place in Georgia is like leaving my father, my mother, and my brothers. It's where we have spent most of our time together for so long and where our "home" has been based for at least twenty years. It is beautiful, peaceful, fun, secluded, safe, comfortable, and representative of our history: here my father's parents were born and died, my father was born, left, and returned, my mother came and established a place for all of us. Is a place so important? May we all hold always in our memories not just this place, but the times we had together and alone, the special aura made of bird songs and frog ribbets, howling hounds in the hills, leaves in tall, tall trees rustled by the wind (not to mention the loud pickup trucks roaring down Loving Road), the smell of lilacs and honeysuckle, the texture of kudzu, and the itch of chigger bites and poison ivy. Don't ever forget wading in the creek off of Old Highway 5, seeing snakes and screaming, running with cousins and feeling closer than we ever felt before or since. Just as we will think of Granny and Papaw, Aunt Glenna and Grace, Charlie and Bonnie, and all the folks who have welcomed us here, we will remember how we felt: free, happy, charmed, and lucky, so lucky.