There is something about returning to one’s hometown at Christmas that stirs memories and moments that at other times lay quietly in one’s memories. As we drove from Alabama to Arkansas it was like a part of my brain recognized that we were going home to where I was reared and began to churn memories of my childhood and youth.
My father’s home is an antebellum home that saw occupancy of generals from the North and the South during the civil war. My family is the third family to live in the home and I played in its 7 acres growing up discovering Civil War buckles, mini balls and trinkets from the soldiers who camped out in its pecan orchard so many years ago…an experience I couldn’t appreciate until much later in life.
My mother is in heaven now, my father’s bride at 73, Virginia, a true Southern lady whom I love. She works hard to make my father’s life full and I am so thankful for their lives together.
To see them both at 77 active and involved and their obvious delight in learning is a study in how to choose to go on after hardship, after losing a spouse to death. My father, a retired doctor and former Air Force Lt. Colonel is a country boy “done good”, he has worked hard his whole life …my childhood filled with 100 hour wees and endless “on call” long before the days of cells phones or pagers, when “on call” meant sitting by a phone…one of five children, a railroad man’s son…he earned his education at Tulane mopping floors then medical school at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences . My father dreamed of owning the Civil War home on the hill on Washington street, and he realized that dream in 1975…he has made his home there since. He is a published newspaper columnist writer, business success, a medical diagnostician unlike any I have known in my life, a timber man…a lifelong learner and thinker…someone I admire immensely, yet I suspect he doesn’t realize how much…
Home in Camden, Arkansas is a study in history. The last stagecoach stop west of the Mississippi is in Camden, it was a town shaped by the Ouachita River. My childhood was filled with Southern delights and traditions so far removed from today’s customs….tea parties….open houses….supper clubs…shared cutting gardens and gracious living. The town is struggling now, the economy a burden….but the stalwarth spirit of the town live on.
I am blessed this Christmas to have enjoyed time with my father and his bride and to return to where my heart lives….to return to worship where now four generations of my family have worshipped, shared and lived.
