This holiday The Daddy misses home, sense of community

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."
--Anais Nin
"Home is the place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to."
-- John Ed Pierce.
"A house is made with walls and beams. A home is built with love and dreams."
--unknown

Listen up. The Memorial Day weekend has come. It's a holiday, and all holidays remind The Daddy of home. The Daddy can't get there this holiday. Like the dead leaves and tree branches lingering on the edges of the roof of his house, there's just too much hanging. But a brotha misses home like a cub misses his momma panda or a kid misses a Georgia peach hanging ripe, yellow, sweet and low on the vine.

Ever miss the place where you were born or the place where you were raised, or the place you call home, no matter where you live now?

Listen, this Memorial holiday, The Daddy would like to write a frivolous post that's easy on the mind, something light and in good cheer. After all, it's a holiday weekend, right? But he can't. You see, a brotha is thinking of Atlanta, his adopted home: home where his mommy gave him and his young male crew cookies when he rushed home from school, opening the kitchen screen door with a fury, yelling almost at the top of his lungs, "Any cookies, momma?"

Home where, if he didn't like the liver momma was cooking for dinner, he could always eat chicken at a friend's house a few houses down the street; Home where even the neighborhood drunk looked out for him by cursing at him when we wandered too far away from his home and by keeping him entertained telling crazy and violent, shoot-em up war stories...

Home where canning peaches, tomatoes and just about everything else was a community affair, with the women working, gossiping and singing along to James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding or Sam Cooke on the radio...

Home where talking ebonics wasn't a behavior evoking embarassment but an affirming statement of identity, a collective recognition of who we were as a people.

When The Daddy thinks of Atlanta, Georgia, he thinks of attending concerts, or hanging around a small cafe near his house and some friendly neighbor buying him a cold coca cola.

He remembers an older, fat black woman who knew his mom or his dad, feeding him chicken, red beans and rice, and telling him he couldn't leave the table until he had finished everything on his plate.

He remembers the older women, white and black, who called him "honey" with genuine affection and who sometimes pulled his head into their bosoms, stroked his head, hugged his face and called him "honey chile."

He remembers the faces of teachers who lived in his neighborhood, who walked with him to school and sometimes fed him cereal (Kellogg Corn Flakes) in the faculty lounge.

A brotha hates to say it, but he even remembers policemen, white and black, who would yell at him and his crew for being late for school, who would threaten to haul us off to jail if we were late again. ..

The Daddy misses a period of time and place when he lived in neighborhoods where, in a myriad of ways, people lived community, where community was defined not by geographical boundaries so much as by real people who looked out for family and everyone else.

For The Daddy and for a lot of us, that community is gone, even in cities like Atlanta. Today, some people don't want to get to know their neighbors or, for that matter, the family next door. The working theory is that getting to know your neighbor could be bad for your health. It could get you robbed, raped or killed.


On the other hand, it makes the communities of the past and our fond memories of them even sweeter. And like small streams from a river, The Daddy can still see traces of those communities. He can still see people helping each other fix cars, mothers feeding kids occasionally coming into a momma's kitchen for cookies after school, an older teenager helping a lady get groceries out of a car.

And The Daddy can still hear music that speaks of his beloved Georgia, that reminds him of a time when blacks breathed community every night and everyday, when we didn't just have Georgia on our minds. We lived Georgia all the time. We smelled sweet peaches lining the boundaries of our home in the backyard, whiffed a scent of sweet Georgia pine, looked out for each other, and never went to bed at night without saying our prayers and ending with "Amen" .

This Memorial weekend, The Daddy will have a couple of cold ones with friends at the neighborhood watering hole. He'll hang for a minute with the brothas at the coffee shop on Sunday. He may even drop into a friend's house on Monday to have some collard greens and sweet potatoes. But beneath the broad smile, he'll have a deep hole in the center of his heart that may never be filled. A brotha misses home, misses community...The Daddy has too many dreams to remember.

Ever miss home during a holiday? Ever listen to a song that bring tears to your eyes and makes you think of home?

Got dreams to remember?