Word After Word

I was so, so happy to be back in the south. Weirdly, my southern accent didn’t come roaring back like it always has before when I am home or around my southern friends. I must be fully switched over to Michigan now. I hear myself on my answering machine outgoing message and I always do a double take: who is speaking? On my recent trip to Kentucky, I loved hearing the voices; every single syllable was a sweet treat. I could have stayed on and on.

 I loved hearing a kid say “Hooch.”  I loved it when my host said, straight up, “Let me roust Scott and Lynda and then I’ll come by for you.” My father always said “roust” and “roust out.” I miss that word like a tooth. I miss everything about rousting. Will any one ever roust me again?

 ”Don’t work too hard,” a man said, leaving Cracker Barrel, to the waitress, who was flying all over with trays of tea and biscuits and gravy. He said it the way you would say “I love you.” I never, ever hear people say don’t work too hard! in the Midwest. Here, I daily hear people say “I’m swamped.” And “I’m so busy–super busy.” And “I can’t take on any more work.” The opposite of I love you, I take these sentences as various versions of Look At Me, I’m Working! and/or maybe Stay Back. Sometimes, I want to call the Midwest Work Ethic the Midwest Unhappiness Ethic.

That man at Cracker Barrel meant by his words this: take good care of yourself and he meant I see how hard you work, and I recognize your humanness and he meant there is more to life than work, which we all know in our hearts, but reality is made up of a lot of work; let it not be what we live for.

When I am in the south, I often feel I am in a sacred place. I often the whole time I am in something like church. When I am in the south, I continually encounter all these openings where grace comes beaming down, bursting through.

I am home now, in Michigan. And my heart is always there, South.

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