Home is Where Your Mama is

Boogaroo is my niece, Alexandria. We have been BFFs since she entered this world and I suspect for many moons before. It was her birth that inspired my first serious desires about writing and it is in watching her grow that I am constantly reignited with adventurous ideas and expectations for the future of the women of the world.

There’s something magical in the eyes of children when they look at you, it makes you feel like you matter.

It’s true that I like to tell stories, but my intent for the records I am creating with a few laughs and occasional tears has, and ever will be, to say (in as many words and ways as possible) that you, Alexandria, you and every beautiful, lovely, intelligent, kind, sympathetic, poetic heart, drenched in emotion and enrobed in the form of women, you matter. You are brilliant like the sunrise. You have the potential to make the world more beautiful with every breath that you breathe. You were always meant to.

My mommy’s birthday is at the very end of July when the sun is hot and the tomatoes are warm in the garden. Since we’ve grown it has gotten difficult for all of us to be in the same place at the same time, but for her birthday, Grammy insists, so in the summer time we come home.

At Mom’s last night before last I was chillin’ with Boogs because her “froat hurts really bad”. She was about to fall asleep when I made an attempt to sneak upstairs and go home for some sleep myself. I was turning the knob on the front door when I heard Alex behind me.

“Where are you going?” She asked.

“Home, Honey. I need to get some sleep.”

“Aunt Buff, why do you live somewhere else?”

Poignant question Boogaroo. With so many answers flashing across the jumbo-tron of my mind I wasn’t sure were to go.

“It’s just where I live, baby girl. Home is always where Grammy is.”

“Oh.” She said. Then she scrunched jungle blankie into a more portable glob in her arms and headed back down stairs to finish “RED” with Grammy, Papa, and Daddy. Satisfied, because to a four-year-old, and to anyone who has ever met my Mommy, my answer made perfect sense.

My mom and dad have done some pretty amazing things in their lives. They have climbed mountains that would give me a nose bleed just thinking of them. Somehow they have managed to weave music and love through the whole of it. My childhood was a happy one. My young adult life has been memorable and sweet. I think of the songs linked to the memories that are dearest to my heart of my family and the time we have been blessed to spend together and I hear my mama’s voice in my head while my daddy strums his scratched and faded sunburst applause; “country road, take me home to the place I belong. West Virginia, mountain mama. Take me home, country road.”

I think this summer we should teach that song to Alex.