Reconciled Roots

I am not a southern girl. I am a northern girl with southern soul and family roots. My spirit is rooted in the South. Every goodthing in my life emanates from southern soil. My sense of family, love of Catholicisim, joy of cooking and my delight in gathering my big, small family around me. My sassiness and my swag all eminate from my Southern roots.


And therein lies the conundrum. Had I been born and raised down here, I would have been graced with the ambiguity of this place called south. Embracing secrets and burying family lies until the truth rolls out slow like dark molasses, giving off its sweet smokey complex flavors found deep in those time honored wooden barrels. But alas I am a northern girl, filled with the complexity of getting to the bottom of things, and hanging the truth high from banners across the landscape of the metro pole.

Blending my Southern soul in the North was easy. The sway and magic of Louisiana filled the pots with aromatic flavors and peppered treasured stories. All grounded by Northern sensebilities. But here in the South East of Louisiana, combining those two elements, Southern sensebilities and Northern pragmatisim

 has presented a grueling proposition, yet full of observations and reflections and a lot of confounding opportunities.

First, living here has made me an advocate of dispelling such trite rumors such as “southerners move so slow,” as perceived by my northern compatriots. Bring your haughty I don’t want to sweat self down to this steaming burg, and see if that east coast/west coast speed racing doesn’t drench you in a malarial like fugue of sweat and prayers for deliverance. And.Why do “they” wave at strangers driving past? Friends, drive anywhere down long highways, and seemingly isolated stretches of road for awhile then see how delighted you are to see a smiling face and friendly wave, reaffirming you are still in civilization, not lost, and probably headed in the right direction. All the while you’ve missed the beautiful breathtaking flora and fauna surrounding you, the way the cypress bend low to dip their leaves in the cool bayou waters, and the graceful egrets gliding to the banks of the bayou, or the dramatic brown pelican rising to claim these beautiful southern skies, and of course you missed the eagles nest with the new babies.

And what about the theory that southerners are “so casual. They just don’t take anything seriously. Time is of the essence.”  Such naive an observation, if you don’t live here, and didn’t grow up here, you have no idea how silently the wheels of getting it done move, one person enlist several other persons who expand that network and in a very short amount of time it is accomplished, and the unknowing can’t conceive at how it was accomplished.  Yet another delightful mystery of my southeast Louisiana.

These are just the beginnings of my musings of my straddling the Mason/Dixon Line, and while they might draw ire and criticism or laughter, I will be sitting, in the meantime, on the Crown Stone.

Though historically the Mason/Dixon Line is the demarcation of the Eastern part of the United States that would remain  free states and the Southern part of the United States that would be slave states, in popular culture the Mason/Dixon line is that empirical boundary that separates the North from the South and for my soul stirrings, from the West as well.

Crown Stones are markers placed at every fifth mile of the Mason Dixon Line bearing the family coat of arms of the state it faced.