Returning Home

I won't be able adequately to express the emotional significance of my parent's move to West Virginia. If you're not from West Virginia, you probably won't understand. Many of us have a deep love of our native state. West Virginia has a unique, bewitching beauty. I arrived at their home last night.

(My mother has an aversion to curtains.) They now live even further out in the sticks than they did in the North Carolina mountains. Last night my two oldest brothers came over for a visit. These fine men live just down the road from parents. Max (on the left) is a farmer. Mark (on the right) is a handyman/woodworker/builder. Between the two of them, they can do just about anything my parents need.

Between the two of them, they also offer eleven grandchildren, which is a fine perk in living here.
My farmer brother and his lovely wife own a pick-your-own blueberry farm. They're regularly in the papers.

I'll have more to share from here as the days go on. My parents were both born and raised in this state, and their families were from here for generations. My brothers have returned here. I haven't lived in West Virginia since I was four years old, but have returned here for visits many, many times. Rural West Virginia has a haunting, mysterious beauty that gets into your head. As soon as I stepped from the car last night I smelled that smell -- grassy, wet, sweet, earthy. West Virginia. I've never smelled it elsewhere. It's the smell of the long, soft grass in my grandparents' yard, decades ago.
I walked the quarter mile from my brother's farm to my parents' home under a half-moon last night.

It's nice to be in my childhood home.