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.