A warm welcome back to the Holiday Season, after all, tis the season of good tidings and good cheer. Along with the Christmas season comes festive lights, gift-giving, and my assured annual return to my small home town.
If you didn’t already observe, I’m originally from the real-life town of Mayberry. True Story, born and bred on the same streets Andy Griffith once ran. My emergence from Mayberry is quite the conversation starter. However, while Andy was running wild in Mayberry (or Mount Airy, as it’s properly called), my own stomping grounds lie more one town over, Mt. Pilot (Pilot Mountain).
My baby sister is also a current Charlotte resident, and while she and I are similar in all sorts of ways we differ in our feelings toward our hometown. While I love the hustle and bustle of this vivacious city of ours, she relishes in the simple and quiet return to Mayberry. So naturally, she high-tailed it home a week before I made my way up I-77.
My sister, like my mother, fell head over heels for her high school sweetheart. Two years into college and they hold strong; so when on day two of her holiday break she ventured out to visit him and his, she came across a rather shocking, and yet customary event. The fence around the farm directly across from our parent’s home had been torn down, allowing everything it kept in- an easy escape route; and as my sister walked down our long driveway to her car she was passed by a cow, just out for a morning stroll.
Yes, this is also a true story.
You see, in a town so small these odd occurrences are anything but rare, and when you get inside county lines you step outside your present life and immerse yourself into what some would call a new world. Sounds pretty dramatic, right?
So I’ve been home for not even twenty-four hours, and already I feel it, Mayberry sort of just does that to you. Christmas Day opened with the fall of snow. It’s your perfect storybook White Christmas. Underneath a thick blanket of snow my mother and I curled up on the couch; she with a copy of the Mount Airy News and me with my laptop lounging in my lap. On Tuesday I’ll be Charlotte bound and back to a hectic routine. Back in Charlotte, I couldn’t tell you the last time I ate breakfast in the morning before work or the last time I took a nap in the middle of the day. Truth be told, I can’t recall the last time I dried my hair before walking out the door, but back in this small town from which I came, time just moves slower. The youth married away young, and the nightlife: nonexistent.
So nonexistent that the things we found to entertain ourselves in high school would probably shock some of you. In high school on those Saturday nights when we had nothing to do, a group of us ventured to the grocery stores before they closed (at ten) to purchase 12 packs of RC Cola or store brand soda-curious as to why?
..Because “canning” was the house favorite and the chosen pastime of all us small town radicals, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with the activity of “canning,” use your imagination.
In our Jeep Wranglers or our pick-up trucks we drove at high speeds down country roads and took turns hurling full cans of soda at street signs. Not as easy as it sounds by the way, and if you so much as nicked a stop sign you were deemed the winner. These sporting events were, of course, saved for Saturday night because the entire town flocked to the high school’s football games on Fridays. This is the world I was brought up in, and the world I was ready to leave behind. So why does this homecoming bring assorted feelings?
With the loss of our power came the slow death to all our electronic devices, no matter how previously charged. My sister was forced to put down her Nook, my other sister her Wii, and my brother had to retire his text conversation with the girlfriend; and when my laptop finally bit the dust there we were, together as a family—technological barriers lifted.
This Christmas break I felt myself slip into a previous life with my mom’s homemade candy and a Christmas tree still decorated with ornaments I made in grade school. With a computer and phone dead I had lost touch with Charlotte and all the people I would have been spending NFL Sunday with. The roads were far too rough to trek on, and so with blankets and the company of each other my family and I savored the peace and quiet of Sunday. No plans were made, no stressing about the upcoming first of the month and all the bills it brings with. No concern for deadlines and work, only sweats and thermals with good conversation.
It occurred to me that these are the simple pleasures I’m missing in Charlotte. Could it be that the very simplicity of Mayberry, which I’ve spent my adult years bolting from, was exactly what I needed?
Life is messy and life is loud, and in this short break from the lively urban society, which currently has my heart, I let go of all the pressure and just existed. When the power came on, all I wanted to do was read by our lit Christmas tree. I watched my sister and her boyfriend exchange Christmas gifts and it brought such a smile to my face. I’m quite grateful for the people in my life, but why is it that in all the chaos of life it takes being snowed in and stuck in a small town to notice it?
When do we take a break from life to remember the little things? The little things like a “goodnight” phone call, a handwritten letter, or the simple “hello” from a stranger you ride the elevator up with in the morning. These are what living really is-embracing each other; and while technology is a god-send at times, could it truly be a catch-22? Now that we have such advanced tools are we losing touch with humanity? We text, we IM, we e-mail, we tweet, we facebook; are we solely communicating through technology? Will we ever put down the Blackberry for the real, face to face conversation for which we may be starved?
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