Going Back, Briefly

The idea of home is a funny thing. For me, having lived in so many different places, home has become a very transient term. Wherever I plan on sleeping that night is "home," whether it be my house, my parents' house, a hotel room, or just a tent. I have often confused friends by saying "home" and meaning the temporary place where we were staying that weekend. I have not been one to indulge nostalgia, and I tend to be of the mind that says "look ahead, not behind." Once you have left a place you have left it, and it is gone. You aren't going back, so there is no reason to look back. Of course, this is not true all the time. There are places that my family has returned to frequently, certain relatives houses or vacation spots. But I have never lived in any of those places as a permanent (or semi-permanent) resident. They too have been places of transition and when a particular stay is over there is little reason to look back.

Currently I am staying in one of these places: a house on the beach that my grandparents own. We are only here for a few days, and I enjoy the time I have here until the time comes to leave. When I do leave there will be no farewell, for it is a familiar place that seems to travel with me, and one I will always return to eventually. Despite this familiarity, however, it is never quite home as some would term home. I think that many people's idea of home could more accurately be described as a feeling of origin. Their home is what produced them, insofar as someone may be a product of a place. During my brief life I have passed so many places into the deep storage in the back of my mind that no geographical position of origin remained in my conscious thought. I have never felt homesick for a particular location. I have missed places, certainly, but only as one misses the warmth of summer in January, or as one misses a pet they had to leave behind for a time while they went on vacation. I have very rarely been stirred to leave my present surroundings by any memory of a dwelling from my past. My motion has been launched by prospects, by looking forward rather than any incentive that came from looking behind.

A curious thing happens to me then, when I return to the old places. This occurs only rarely, and it must be a product of my unconscious where all of the memories of those times are stored only to be dredged up when I draw near their locals. I have no draw to these places, no inner urging to return to them even if I am on their borders, but the moment I cross that border, something strange happens. A sense of home, long forgotten, suddenly surfaces. I know, suddenly, that I belonged here once, even if I do not any more. It's as if I can see ghosts of myself moving along in old habits, but I am so far removed from them that I cannot feel anything for them except a strange wonderment. When I leave that place I feel no misgivings, no longing to stay or tears at the thought of going, and once I am away from it I forget it quickly. But while I am there I love it.

Perhaps a description of such a place would help me explain this to you. By driving a for bit over hour inland from this beach house you may come into the heart of the Lowcountry. South Carolina has three regions recognized by the inhabitants, mainly the Upstate and the Lowcountry and to a smaller extent the regions between the two, sometimes known as the sand hills. I have had the privilege of living in all three. The Upstate is up from the rest in the sense that it is in the north of South Carolina and also that it is a little bit higher in altitude than the rest. Here there are hills and forests of varying trees and the land moves a bit more as it goes up to reach the mountains. The sand hills are the transition space between the two and contain a bit of each in the terrain of the Upstate and the flora of the Lowcountry to some extent. The Lowcountry is the southern part of the state; it is mostly flat and stretches to include much of the coast. It is the Lowcountry of South Carolina that I would consider my location of most basic origin.

I do not say this because I was born there; I was born in a very different part of South Carolina. But the Lowcountry is where I had my first memories, particularly that place a bit over an hour inland from the coast here. This place does not have much to recommend it to outsiders. Here the roads are straight and flat. They are bordered by trees or fields. If there are trees then they are usually pine, standing straight and tall and planted in straight lines. If you can see over the underbrush then you can sometimes see straight through an entire stand of them. If there are fields then they are planted with corn or cotton, or perhaps other grains. Here and there you will see a house. Every road is like this. The interstate is far away and where it does cut through this area it is shielded from the distance of this place by more tall stands of pine trees, and there is not way to get from it them without going down the road for a ways. Not all of the trees here are pine, of course. Every now and then you might spot a live oak all hung with spanish moss whose seed found a way inland from the coast, and very occasionally a palmetto or two. Cypress trees grow in the lower areas where water leaks.

The roads to not lead much of anywhere, but they do not lead nowhere. There are small towns scattered about, tiny places with half the buildings boarded up and the rest simply living their quiet unchanging lives as they have since they were built. Some towns are no more than a few buildings at an intersection, or a place where the railroad passes by. If you stop and exit your vehicle you will find that the grass does not grow up and out of so much as over the ground, overlapping itself in little many-bladed tendrils until it has covered a sufficient amount of sand to turn it a very dusty gray-green. Here you could go barefoot in the summer if you didn't mind the prickliness of the grass and could manage to avoid the countless fire-ant hills. Sandspurs grow well in this region, though they grow in greater numbers near the coast. Things move slowly here. This place is not the sleepy laziness of the "country" as it is the timelessness of a place far removed from anything. It is the place I inexplicably love whenever I return to it, however briefly.

This area is not without its charms of course. In the spring wisteria drapes the trees and azaleas bloom in people's yards. The roads might be traveled for miles without going anywhere, which in my eyes is a wonderful thing. The fields are open and wide, the stands of pine trees are large, and for a moment you might wonder if this land does not go on forever. But eventually you will drive out of it, you will reach the sand hills or the coast and you will begin to wonder if the place exists at all. I was there, once, and I was comforted by the thought that it was once home. I cherished it and I loved it, but now that I am gone I do not miss it much. Even as I write this I begin to forget it. But that place does exist and should I go back there again I will instantly feel the same. I can forget it for a time, but never completely. It follows me too. Why else would the sight of a pine cone bring such joy? But it is not necessary joy. It comes and it goes, sitting only in the corners of my eyes while they fasten on the places I have never been, the roads I have never taken. The places of the past are well forgotten, not lost, but set out of sight until they are needed.