charleston south carolina. as soon as you drive into the downtown area all you can see are grand old houses and giant oak trees and verandas with potted plants and people talking in the shade. the houses themselves and the narrow streets and the great trees make you feel a little like you are in 1850. then you see college kids, walking in twos or threes, boys in baseball caps and cargo shorts and jaunty windblown hair, girls in jersey knit 80s style dresses and strappy flat sandals and smooth blond hair, all headed toward some party and talking in southern accents which never fails to sound charming unless it is too loud and drunken.
strange to be in such a historical place that, despite its beauty, i do not want to romanticize too much because you have to remember what all this was built on: slavery. enslaved human beings. here in the south you can never forget that. it doesn't seem so very long ago. there is an unease in the thick humid air. although people are altogether friendly and welcoming and careful with each other. here in this part of the city i don't see many black people. it is all college kids and rich southern whites (parents? anne rivers siddons? descendants of settlers and plantation owners?) going around in fancy clothes and suits and springtime hats to the theater or out to eat and being charming and using impeccable manners that are so deliberate you can't help to wonder what is beneath all that.
stranger still to be in a historical place with all these implications and have the people all around you be blithe young white college kids who are in their own little world and seem oblivious to the haunted city around them. this city is called "the holy city." because of all the old churches, whose tall steeples and spires make up the skyline, between the rivers and out to the sea.
i am so glad to be able to explore our country and feel like a tiny little part of it all. and here in the south in a weird way (and this is simply pride talking) darin and i are unique and i feel good about that. scared too, because i think more people should be sort of like us no matter how conceited that sounds, i think you know what i mean, but i guess what i have to remember is that you cannot judge a book by its cover. and even here, where money and family names and old greed and power are still so tangible and vital, i have to remember that all these people are doing their best to live out through that history and maybe even make positive changes.
so i haven't even written about savannah georgia which is similar to this town only the college there is an art and design school so all the young people walking around look a tad bit more "bohemian" or tybee island where we spent the night in a beachside village and did our laundry and drank beers and walked out on the beach.
when we get home if anyone wants to know more details, you guys can read my trip journal/scrapbook thingie. i write in it every single day. some details get left out, and some inane details get added that i wonder about later. like no one needs to know where we went to pee first thing in the morning or whatever. but i get obsessive about details sometimes, at moments when i should be paying attention to the place more and not ourselves in it.
i am missing you all and imagine you guys all the time, what you're doing and how you are and how much you'd like various parts of our travels. we are headed up to myrtle beach today. big vacation spot (maybe not our cup of tea) and then over to north carolina tomorrow.
I LOVE YOU ALL!!!
A Moment in the Sun - a literary journey
2 years ago
5 comments:
It sounds like you guys are having so much fun. And don't you worry, none of us would ever think of you and Darin being conceited. But do be proud that you are different. You guys are amazing. I miss both of you so much. I loved to hear Darin playing his guitar and singing in his own little way to Bella or just to himself. To hear your chatty banter and laughter through out the house. You make the south sound so beautiful. I would love to live on one of those streets, but with different neighbors from the sound of it. keep writing in your journal, don't leave out the crazy details of where you went pee. I love those kinds of things.
Heather, you make this all sound exactly like I imagine it to be. I've read about it in books, my favorite books all seem to take place in the south. Peachtree Road by Anne River Siddons is one of those. I miss you but am so glad you are having a wonderful, historical odyssey. Love to Darin, love you too, Mom
Heather this sounds amazing. I wish we were right there with you, running along and past and by everything.
It is crazy too how our nation was founded on slavery. It's horrible, but we have to be discriminating (in the W.E.B. Du Bois sense) about how we view others, like southerners. Some may still practice what their grand- and greatgrandfathers did, but others may just be southerners, born into a place that has a stereotype and not necessarily perpetuating it. I don't know.
I guess we all are a little bit complicit in how some of the sad past (manifest destiny, slavery, women as citizens, civil rights and so on) of our amazing country still affects us today. The best we can do is try to change the mindset that may have been bred in us or that may have founded a good thing, a great thing even, while allowing other terrible things.
So you are Darin are good and right in what you're doing and how you're seeing and participating and objectively viewing and thinking about things. I wish we all could be like you two!
Someday let's all of us do a nice long road trip. All together. It would be great. Two vans? We can buy that blue one down the street. We can go to some of the places you two have been before, and some new ones. Maybe there are some we know of (probably only in Utah) where we can all go too. Maybe to Mexico.
Do you guys want to come to Utah to camp this summer? There are actually lots of cool places. In Fishlake National Forest the world's heaviest (and probably oldest) known living organism is there--a single aspen "colony" that is genetically the same, all sharing one common root system and spread from one single tree. It's called Pando. Cool huh.
that's funny mom. i have been wanting to buy peachtree road ever since we were in savannah. i see other anne rivers siddons books at used shops but i don't really like the others, they seem more - shall i say, "literary candy" - whereas peachtree road (one of her first novels) seems actually very good. that is just my "at a glance" opinion. and this author i love named v.s. naipaull interviewed anne rivers siddons when he toured the south for this book i just finished reading A Turn in the South. i just love what she had to say. we can talk more about it later. i just find it synchronistic that you mention that particular book! i love you!
matt, yes i think we all agree to camp in utah. you pick the place. and we can do it around the time of your graduation. as far as a big road trip together someday that would be my DREAM COME TRUE. i think about it all the time. vans come in very handy. children don't need classrooms they need real life history and knowledge and exploration! okay, and classrooms too. but this would be the best all-family experience ever. in our lifetimes, we need to do this.
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