Music Monday/Lyric Lundi

Many of us who are Southern and have chosen to live elsewhere, if fed truth serum, would probably admit that on some levels we ran away from home. The South is a beautiful, bitter, heartbreaking, emotional place, and for those of us with fragile hearts and righteous indignity (especially twenty-something righteous indignity), it’s a difficult place to stay. Oh, who am I kidding? A better way of putting that is that I was a coward. I just never really fit in down there. Instead of staying and becoming involved in trying to make systemic changes, I focused on getting far away and leaving that hard work up to others (okay, in fairness, I also wanted to go somewhere that had a little more snow than North Carolina).

No place is perfect, though (although Maine comes pretty close). I learned that quickly enough, and I sometimes regret that I’ve always been so hard on North Carolina. I’ve learned secrets during the 20+ years since I left the South. For instance, no, the 21^st-century South isn’t any more racist than many other places in this country (as a matter of fact, my hometown is probably less so than where I am currently living), and I now know that running away from a past for which I wasn’t responsible isn’t always the wisest move. I’ve also learned that there is much about the South that I miss.

The first year I was living in Connecticut, a friend of mine introduced me to the Indigo Girls. One song of theirs in particular made me homesick in a way I hadn’t been since moving. It’s true: the South may not offer up very good winters, but its springtime is spectacular. I listened to the song many, many times and was brought back to those wonderful afternoons in our old farmhouse with open windows bringing in a warm breeze that mixed the smell of freshly-mown grass with the metallic smell of rusty old screens, the mud puddles from spring rains that my brother and I played in for hours, the apple blossoms and dogwoods that turned our yard pure white. The horrible, oppressive heat and humidity of the summer was on its way, but somehow, it seemed like it was such a long way off, sitting on the front porch, watching the robins hopping around near the front walk. As I listened and reminisced, I realized with each tug of a heartstring, how complicated my relationship to my region of birth is.

It’s still complicated. It’s like a family member. I will complain about it all the time to others, but if anyone dares to say anything negative about it in my presence, I will snap to its defense, wondering “How could you say that?” But I am oh-so-proud of my home states of North Carolina and Virginia since November 4^th. Look how far we’ve come in my lifetime. It looks like the South is continuing to move forward, that we’re staring at a magnificent new springtime “where the waters flow with confidence and reason,” so, this week's pick from among my favorite songs seems evermore appropriate.

Southland in the Springtime

Indigo Girls

Maybe we'll make Texas by the morning
Light the bayou with our tail lights in the night
800 miles to el paso from the state line
And we never have the money for the flight
I'm in the back seat sleepy from the travel
Played our hearts out all night long in New Orleans
I'm dirty from the diesel fumes, drinking coffee black
When the first breath of Texas comes in clean

And there's something 'bout the Southland in the springtime
Where the waters flow with confidence and reason
Though I miss her when I'm gone it won't ever be too long
Till I'm home again to spend my favorite season
When God made me born a yankee he was teasin'
There's no place like home and none more pleasin'
Than the Southland in the springtime

In Georgia nights are softer than a whisper
Beneath a quilt somebody's mother made by hand
With the farmland like a tapestry passed down through generations
And the peach trees stitched across the land
There'll be cider up near Helen off the roadside
And boiled peanuts in a bag to warm your fingers
And the smoke from the chimneys meets its maker in the sky
With a song that winter wrote whose melody lingers

And there's something 'bout the Southland in the springtime
Where the waters flow with confidence and reason
Though I miss her when I'm gone it won't ever be too long
Till I'm home again to spend my favorite season
When God made me born a yankee he was teasin'
There's no place like home and none more pleasin'
Than the Southland in the springtime