"Where we love is home -

home that our feet may leave

but not our hearts."

                                                                                                                             Oliver Wendell Holmes

I think we are born longing for home.  As I spun my teen-age fantasies of fame and fortune in faraway places, I would have vehemently denied  I was looking for home. I belonged elsewhere; I was certain of that.  We were poor country people. In my mind the women lived limited lives of hard work and self-denial, the prospect of which sent me into a panic. It never occurred to me that there is no insurance against life's trials.  And so I set about to reinvent myself.

After many years, a lot of hard work and a great deal more good luck,  I had a great education, a prestigious career, a great family, and a good zip code.  I believed I had recreated myself. I lost my accent,  I even changed my name.  I seldom thought about that little country girl desperate to escape her origins and no one would have recognized her.  But just below the surface, vague discontent simmered; a little voice nagged.  I read self-help books,  learned yoga,  smoked too much, ate too much and drank too much,  but the best I  ever got was temporary relief.  At the  next life crises, the scaffolding of my latest self-improvement program would collapse and once more, I would be left with the old familiar unease, the same small voice insisting "Listen! Listen to me!"

Then one day, as distraction from household chores I turned on the TV to find a movie about a family eerily like the one of my childhood.  In that imaginary family, I was finally able to see the beauty of my own, their courage, resilience, strength, and simple goodness.  I began to cry for the first time in years.  Feelings suppressed for decades rose to the surface and I could no longer avoid the truth.  I no longer wanted to avoid the truth.  Painful as it was, I had to see that I had confused "home" with material things; comfort and appearances.  I had overlooked, or refused to see, the  strengths of my heritage; the breathtaking beauty of my birthplace, the creativity and resourcefulness of my people.  I had  ignored the circumstances of place and time that constrained them, the everyday challenges of daily life that limited their choices beyond anything I ever knew or could imagine.  Most of all, I had discarded the enduring values  that were my inheritance.  Ironically, I was the one living the limited life!  I had believed my heritage was an impediment to my pursuit of the "good life," a view in which, sadly, I was aided by popular culture.  And to some extent it was true. It was not at all cool to be  a poor southern white girl  in the Sixties.   But oh, how much easier life would have been if only I could have summoned the courage to be all that I was, to apply to life problems the wisdom instilled in me from birth as well as that I had learned, which, to be fair, was not insignificant.  But it was as though I had spent my whole life stubbornly hopping on one foot instead of simply walking.

In hindsight, it seems so obvious, but I had to learn that heritage cannot be denied. It is the soil from which we spring. Never perfect, with its share of rocks and weeds, it will require tilling.  But we cannot escape it. It is who we are. We can only choose to be nourished and grow from it or to pull ourselves out by the roots and wither.

I am one of the lucky ones who has been welcomed home, for which I am sincerely grateful, humbled and more than a little surprised.  But after all, it's not about me.  The graciousness with which I was welcomed home  only confirms who they are.  So with open eyes, a grateful heart and a passion to learn and tell the stories of my foremothers before they are lost in the dust of history, I am finally home.