Went home this weekend – to Louisiana and East Texas and back to Arizona, all in the span of three days.
Home: 70 percent humidity. 80 degrees. 100 percent misery. Even shade is no haven – the warm damp just sticks to the backs of your thighs like so many vinyl car seats. But it’s my home – it’s where I’m from, or as they say back home, where my people are from.
Now I make my home in Arizona. 15 percent humidity. 100 degrees. Sunshine 300 days of the year. Climatically, it’s a much better trade off if you ask me – though it did my heart good to see the silver backs of oak leaves hissing in the wind. You don’t really hear the breeze through the leaves out here in Arizona – and I don’t really miss it until I go home to the tangle of kudzu among the trunks of roadside woods. Forest primeval and all that.
We ate crawfish – my all-time favorite food in the whole world and the very definition of “in season” and “locally grown.” Apparently you dial a phone number 1-800-555-BUGS, and a nameless gentleman will meet you on the side of the road with some fifty-pound sacks on ice in the bed of his pick-up truck. Cash only. They were the most gorgeous big-fat mudbugs I’ve ever eaten (and yes, I say that every year – absence makes the heart grow fonder and the eyes grow bigger).
So we drank cold beer and ate hot bugs, and allow me to state for the record, that the folks back in Athens, Texas do a mighty fine job with the Pat and Stacy Krewe of Helios-Arizona gumbo recipe. We are honored to be on the guest list for the Clays’ annual crawfish boil and I believe we’ve (I’ve) made it to each one (I believe attendance is mandatory since we were sort of the inspiration for the shindig). Truly, this is one of my trips “home” every year because I go to see old friends and my family makes the drive from Shreveport.
In his comet-like appearance – once in a blue moon, and really exciting when it happens – Pat riled up the children, demonstrating why it’s important to pull up your shorts, lest you trip and fall while giving chase (or being chased).
Of course, he ended the evening with the unforgettable quote: “Where have y’all been all night? I’ve only saved the galaxy only three times while y’all’ve been out here drinking beer?”
He said it while holding a light saber and beating back a marauding horde of under-10s that came at him in waves like mini-Mel Gibsons from Braveheart.
And then it was time to come home. Pat says his home now is in Arizona – our home is here. I’d never go back to Louisiana to stay: There’s not as much opportunity there for us, and frankly, it’s too damn hot. But when I’m leaving to go there, I say I’m going home…
Home to the leafy trellis and porch swing in my folks’ backyard, resonant with good memories and good times to come. Home to lazy drawls and screen porches and buzzing locusts and whining frogs. Home to people that sweat the crawfish season and compare gumbo recipes and bring sandwiches for the kids and anyone else, just in case they don’t want crawfish. Home where your friends miss your mom because she couldn’t make it this year to save the day like she always does.
But when it’s time to take leave and return to the desert, I return with relish and longing. It’s time to go back home, I say, back to our dogs and the nest that we’ve made, back to our backyard and our small piece of parched earth in this strong and barren landscape. It’s good to be back home. It’s more than where I hang my hat. It’s where I lay my head and dream my dreams.