about where I'm from

Today I woke up where I’m from.  

I went for a jog through my small, sleepy town, before I had my first cup of coffee and the light was still young.  I walked down my steps where we took pictures after high school graduation, on the hottest Virginia summer day anyone could remember.  I turned right on Winchester Street, ran pass the houses with their genteel southern porches and their historical society plaques bearing years in the 1800’s.  

I paused at the corner by the library, where my best friend stalled out on the steep hill a few days after we got our licenses, and we rolled backwards and squealed.  Up from there, the court houses sits enthroned above Blackwell Road, and when I drive that way I think of it like a banner always hanging, reading “home”.   From the steps, where they light the tree every Christmas, I twisted and saw speckled Blue Ridge through the clear.  

Making my way down Main Street, I looked in Jimmie’s store windows; the owner sends a gossip e-mail I read at work each morning for the latest small town scandals.  The restaurant next door, where I worked one summer, bore a new name.  I paused in front, remembering our weekly family dinners there in the golden lit rooms, leisurely pouring ourselves over courses and how chef would serve us the crème Brule we loved in soup bowls.  

Then I came to the Presbyterian church where I was confirmed, where I was a shrieking middle schooler running through the halls during lock-ins, where I once got to climb the bell tower and made the sound ding across the whole town. 

I made my way through the Farmer’s Market and glanced at pumpkins and squash arranged by men and women with smiles and dirt under their nails.  

I crossed Culpepper Street and wound downhill toward home, through the court house lawn where jazz bands and bluegrass bands play in the summer.  I stopped at the bakery where you can (but it isn’t encouraged to) climb the ladder to the roof and smoke cigars at night.  I sipped their coffee and walked in the direction of my middle school, of the ice cream stand where they know my parent’s orders by heart, and the 24-hour diner where I’ve sat many nights, slipping quarters into the jukebox. 

I turned again and came home, and my house was quiet and familiar with the tick of the grandfather clock in the foyer. 

Now I sit in the sunroom, where there are succulents and a cactus with violet blooms, and I think of my younger life.  I think of how dark my room was last night, without streetlight, without drunken heels tapping against sidewalks and cars whizzing by.  I watch my dog’s ribcage move up and down with breath.  

I think of this town and it feels to me like an impassioned cavalry – the last remaining lines, holding their ground against the invasion of shopping malls and hasty time. 

I think of how often my mind catapults me into the future, into cities with humming pulses and noise.  

I think of stories, the good kind, how they always root themselves in their start. 

I think of wanting that to be true of the story that’s mine.