Too Far from Memphis
While I sit on the couch with my husband, the orange ball the sun morphs into at the end of the day stands firm as the earth rolls into night. The incandescent star is too far from Memphis to cast a flame onto the Mississippi River. Instead, the water’s surface has a sheen like ice. Arkansas is what’s on fire.
“Memphis is easy,” I told my husband, after I had groped for words for a while. “It’s so familiar.”
He agreed.
When I’m driving the city streets, I can almost set it on auto-pilot. I know where I’m going and how to get there. This is a big deal for someone as geographically challenged as I am. Ease. Slide your palms across the wheel. Turn here. The oaks canopying North Parkway have roots that dig down centuries.
Memphis was my home for twenty years. I wasn’t born here. So the “my home” is okay. “Home” feels presumptuous. And, of course, New Orleans is home now—I have a Louisiana driver’s license. Mississippi is home. I’m from there, real home. The in-between of Memphis confuses my heart. I am both too close and too far from Memphis.
I am content on the couch. The river has deepened to navy blue. The pinpoints of the town of West Memphis string across the far treetops. The sun, slowly, calls it a day.
Emma
Beautiful words, Ellen. Being “home” is something I have been contemplating for months now, ever since I moved back to my birthplace, Hattiesburg. Someplace I thought I’d never return to. I’ve been “too far from home” for most of my life.
Miss seeing you and Tom.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Thank you, Emma. We miss you too. I was at the Deep South Convening last weekend where they are talking about the South always drawing you back in. I feel that way about Mississippi. Even now, I sometimes marvel, who thought I’d have a house on the coast? I’m so glad you feel you’ve gone home to Hattiesburg.
Joanne Corey
The aphorism “Home is where the heart is” is not one I hear much anymore, but I think it’s true. I think our heart can be close to multiple places, that several places can be home for us. Sometimes, a place where we spend a relatively short amount of time can be home. I still feel at home at Smith, even though I only lived there nine months a year for four years over forty years ago and so much has changed on campus. Perhaps my definition of home is too expansive but it’s clear that Memphis is in your heart.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Ah, surely a definition that expands the contours and contents of our heart can never be too expansive. ❤️ I’m so glad you have the warm memories of Smit—warm, I say, because they sound still alive and breathing inside you. I’m going to take a moment to muse on that: what place produces a living, breathing response in me? (Ha, ha–my first thought is Mackinac Island, where I spent a sum total of 2 weeks!)