The Last Road in the Hills.

That day that my father and I drove the cloudy road to Oxford, Mississippi is not one that I can soon forget. We set out early, coffee and books in hand, not too sure what to expect from the day’s plans. Forgetting to play music through my cracked speakers we broke the silence with our own thoughts. Dreams. Love. New starts, new endings. Most of all though, we talked Mississippi.

My father grew up in the sticky, mysterious heat of Natchez, Mississippi--one of the only antebellum towns to be left untouched by the Civil War, standing tall and proud in the south part of the state. I think it’s because they were such shrewd businessmen that they were left alone. Whatever the reason, the town that lives today, and that lived in my father’s day, is a lone reminder of the proud South before it was ravaged by war. I love it there. I love walking down the cracked sidewalks downtown and being overtaken by greenery in the summer. Count cats. There are about 1 million of them per residential road. My smallest brother and I explored downtown one summer evening at sundown. Escaping the stifling heat and emotion of my grandfather’s visitation, we slipped outside and gulped in the sweet, warm dusk. Somehow in Mississippi, even when the sun goes down you can still feel it beating down through the darkness. The heat never goes, and always with the heat comes the thick air. You could cut it with a knife. We skipped down the uneven street and turned onto a small road overhung with oak trees that I’m sure were thriving when brontosauruses were hanging out and eating their leaves. Creeping down the sidewalk, we snuck up on unsuspecting cats and tried to catch them. We never could, but we saw eight. I remember that each time another one ran across the street, we squealed with the discovery. Eight. I checked with him and he remembers. I held his hand as he climbed the fence at a plantation home that had been left standing in the center of town. We brushed our hands on the cast-iron gates as we walked by. The hum of the mosquitoes never stopped, and somehow, even though the river was at least a half-mile from where we were, I could still feel it under my feet. Smell it. Hear it. That was my father’s home.

My mother was raised in the Mississippi Delta, home of the blues, home of the floods, home of the heart of this state. I hated the delta when I grew up, there was nothing attractive to me about flatlands covered with thousands and thousands of cotton crops. We drove there often to visit my grandmother and I would sulk in the back of the car, watching the plowed rows in fields rush by, looking like pages turning in a book. I never saw myself loving the floodlands. I never once in my childhood could picture myself happy surrounded by soul and mosquitoes. The beautiful thing finding out about oneself though, is being able to recognize when you were an idiot. The delta has crept into my heart slowly, over the years. There was no sudden realization where I understood what I had been missing. It was through the steady learning of what I am made of, my heritage, my great-grandmemaw’s stories about the lakehouse and snakes in the basement when the river flooded it. It was through my introduction to blues, my ever-growing love of the land. The delta snuck in before I had a chance to stop it. Even as I write this, I am leaving the hill country and setting out onto the delta. Behind me is that last clinging attempt at uneven land and then flat, flat, flat for as far as I can see. The family is packed into the car, even the dog, and we sit in silence, soaking up what we know is rightfully ours.

Daddy and I talked about a great many things on that roadtrip. But the thing that I’ll remember most was his preaching to the choir about our rich heritage, about the beauty of the South. We drove through a small town shaded by trees. “These are your roots”, He told me proudly. And I was proud too.




As for Easter, it was very well spent. A day in the Delta painting eggs, making a large lunch, shooting the air rifle in the backyard [I can knock cans off of a shelf, thank you very much.] and most of all, fellowshipping with family. No church today because of the travel, but I don't think I could have felt the burn of the sick realization of what was done and then the overwhelming joy of what was accomplished anywhere better than the sundrenched fields of Mississippi this morning. My family loves Jesus, and that encourages me so, so much.