The Wonder Years

I know it was a bittersweet weekend for Mississippi, a big win for one team, a big loss for another. I may have been gone for 9 years and I may live almost 500 miles from home, but my roots run deep. I swear the only reason i pay such a ridiculous price for TV is so that if MS State or Ole Miss is playing footbal, basketball, baseball, or water polo, i can catch the game; and I'm never so proud as when i wear my Ole Miss or Ms State t-shirt (yes, i have both)in a sea of Bulldog red.

I'm proud of my home state, yes, and it has more to do with just football,(though i do think it is a grand sport:) I get all giddy when i check out a magazine and see some aspect of the Magnolia state highlighted. Just today I had some free time to read my Southern Living out on the back deck and was thrilled to see that as they were highlighting the Best of the South, Mississippi and its famous Mississippians stole the show for the amazing music. Specifically, it is the music of the Delta, the legendary Blues singers who honed their talent from the way of life that is so typical of the flat farm land that stretches along Highway 61.

Awww, all of a sudden I'm a little homesick. I lived in the Delta, very briefly, and drove that highway so many times i knew every bend and bump in the road. Sadly, I remember, too, that I couldn't wait to leave the Delta, head down 61 one last time and never go back. Did i not know then what I know now? Were there no articles on the music, the history, the family relationships that prevail in small towns along the river?

I was too young to appreciate the culture shock of a town that doesn't change much, where the high schools are staffed mostly with teachers who are former students, or neighborhoods whose streets sound off like alphabetical listings in a phone book. Nope, I couldn't see it, and as soon as life opened another door we packed our things and floored that U-Haul down that same highway one last time.

Well, as it often does, life has a funny way of turning things around on you, and seven years later we found ourselves in a another new town, eerily similar to the one we fled so many years ago: high school students checking us out at the grocery store, churches filled with great-grandparents and their kids, grandkids, and finally their great grandkids, one redlight only on the way to school, the closest mall 30 minutes away. Yes, I'd been here before, but this time . . . surprise of all surprises, I LOVE it! I am smarter now(older, too), aware that it is the little things in life that make a city a home, and not just some place you live until the next door opens and the moving van shows up.

And for a coach and his family, new doors open up all the time. Plenty of doors have opened (and closed) for us, and realistically many more will in the future. So even though i regret the impulsive me who didn't appreciate what i was leaving behind in the Delta, I can now say that wherever we go, whatever each new town holds (or doesn't), I cherish each person, each road I run, each little quirk it holds, because you never know, the town you once ran from just might turn into the place you're running to.