Friday, January 30, 2015

Places Matter

The past two weeks absorbed me in family events both turbulent and sorrowful, but now I have time to ruminate on various matters again. My mother's family buried another uncle last week, the 'baby' of her family, who at the age of 75 still seemed quite young. Fortunately, my sister and I could attend the funeral and the gathering of a portion of the family afterward. These two events occurred in the same town all the brothers and sisters called home, and in which the family homeplace still stands.

As we walked down the hill to the cemetery behind the church, we passed the graves of numerous family members. My grandparents are there; my mother's brother Charles and her sister Belle; her brothers-in-law Howard and Grant; my cousins C.G. and Jeff; my great-uncle Raymond and his wife Nell. And now my uncle Jim. It's a fitting location for them all, because my great-grandfather gave the land for the first church there and my grandfather built the current church. They all lie in land that belonged to our family for generations. This is the right place for them to be.

The modest church building overlooks the cemetery. The graves themselves lie in rows that descend down a steepish hill, and the whole area is surrounded by trees. In the January bleakness, I could see my uncles' houses and the homeplace quite clearly across the way. When I have visited in warmer seasons, the trees and underbrush enclosed the cemetery and created a quiet, peaceful, verdant spot away from everything.

I have always said that I wanted to be buried right along with the rest of the Sanders family in that cemetery. I don't know if that is actually what will happen, chiefly because my children don't associate as closely to that part of the world as I do, and I want them to be able to visit my final spot! But it would be somehow comforting to know that I was there with so many people that I loved and that loved me. It is a place that has always mattered to me and always will.

The other significant place for me in that part of the world is the family homeplace. It is actually the second house built on that foundation, the first one having burned completely one bitter March day when my mother was 7 or 8 years old. Only a very few pieces of furniture and my grandfather's violin were saved. For all of the cousins (and a couple of the brothers and sisters), however, the existing house is the only one we've ever known. My grandfather and his friends and relatives scrambled to raise this house out of the ashes of the previous one, using the same foundation and taking the timber from trees on the property. The siding on that house is amazingly thick! No insulation has ever been added. When my uncles have had to replace or add windows, just cutting through the walls has been a challenge. It is a solid house.

The homeplace matters to me because it holds an untold wealth of memories. My parents took us back there every single summer for one, sometimes two, weeks of vacation. Every single summer, from the time I was a year old until I was married. Cousins and aunts and uncles swarmed over the area. We picked blackberries under the guidance of Aunt Edith, who had long ago scoped out all the best locations. We listened to endless variations of stories about the Sanders Ghost and other spine-tingling tales. We clambered all over those hills, played in the creek, helped crank the freezer to make ice cream, got into trouble, and generally shared those yearly gatherings as fully as we could. One summer, all the uncles and cousins helped roof my Uncle Jay's new house across the road! Anyone who could wield a hammer and climb a ladder had the opportunity to help out. If I walked around behind his house even now, I could point out where I worked diligently on that plywood.

My grandparents' house is the epicenter of the family. Lately the gatherings have been for saying goodbyes to loved ones instead of vacations, and a certain melancholy hangs over the house a little now. There are just so many memories. My oldest uncle doesn't come back there any more because it is just too hard to think about who is not there and who won't be there again. I understand that. I miss them all, too. But the last few times I've been back to the house, I have been comforted rather than saddened. I have slept in the bedroom that my grandmother slept in. I have washed the dishes at the sink she used and looked out the window at the view she saw every day (which happens to be the church and the graveyard). I have eaten in her dining room and drunk the water from the original well, still being used. Although some other things are different, the house still looks out over the same mountains that my grandparents saw every day. I am happy when I am in this house.

When I consider how many places my husband and I have lived, I can't point to any particular one that has remained 'home' for me. I don't anticipate staying in our current home once we retire completely. My grandmother Harrison's wonderful house in Portsmouth fell prey to the need for connecting I-264 to the downtown tunnel (which nearly broke my heart in 1971). My children most likely regard my parents' house as their 'homeplace'. So the place that anchors me, the place that feels like the one spot on earth where I have roots, remains that very modest, simple farmhouse back in Macon County. It's a place that matters.

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