Virginia - The House That Built Me

Recently I had the opportunity to return to Virginia for my cousin's wedding.  My parents and brother were born in Virginia, and I'm the displaced Yankee born in Ohio.  I never experienced a Christmas morning in Ohio until after I was 18.  My summer vacations were always to Virginia.  So it feels like home to me too in a way.

Every time I go back there, I seem to follow a ritual that involves visiting the cemetery where my grandparents are buried, and driving by the modest little house where they lived, and where so many memories were created during my childhood.  I recall that place booming with laughter and bustling with people, but to drive by now, it looks so tiny and slight.  I want so much to walk inside of that house just one more time.  Miranda Lambert has a single called "The House That Built Me" that strikes a chord with me for this very reason. 

What would it really accomplish to step inside?  The biscuit dough I threw on the ceiling (until it got so tacky it stuck for good) - I'm sure it's been cleaned up and cleared away.  The smells of homemade chocolate pie - long gone.  The smoky haze in the bathroom as my grandma tried to hide the fact that she was still smoking - long cleared up.  Still, life happened there.  I learned more about who I was, who my parents were, who my grandparents were...  I can't go into that physical place anymore.  Perhaps that's why I'm so drawn to the cemetery.  Earlier this summer when I was there, I went to that cemetery and literally laid at the foot of their graves and let myself have a big cry.  I talked aloud about the pain I was feeling in my heart at that time, asked them questions they couldn't answer, and told them how much they had impacted my life.  Love is a powerful thing and it doesn't die when it is real.  I think sometimes we associate physical places with emotional feelings and so we return again and again in an effort to recapture those emotions.

I know someday my last living grandparent will be gone and I will feel all of these things about her house too.  So for now, I soak it all up, marinate in those fond memories of a simpler life with nothing to do but laugh and love and pass the time.

"I know they say you can't go home again

I just had to come back one last time

Ma'am I know you don't know me from Adam

But these handprints on the front steps are mine.

I thought if I could touch this place so freely

This brokenness inside me might start healing

Out here it's like I'm someone else

I thought that maybe I could find myself...

If I could just come in I swear I'll leave

Won't take nothin' but a memory

From the house that built me."

~Miranda Lambert