Exotic

I blame my mother. She taught me to read when I was three. And what was I to do after reading of Alice and Dorothy, of alternate realities in which animals talked, of flying elevators, of worlds where doors in closets opened to kingdoms ruled by witches… but wish I was from anywhere but from where I actually was? A small town in South Carolina. Not a talking animal to be found, no witches or warlocks hiding in my closet, no chocolate factories, no yellow brick roads. The most exotic creatures I ever saw were chickens and cows… who definitely didn't speak, at least not any language I ever learned. The only people I ever saw were neighbors who doubled as cousins… and cousins who doubled as cousins. We called our factories "plants" and the workers in them produced items as provocative as rubber tubes and t-shirts. And most of our roads were made of dirt, so whether you were walking or riding your bike, the only result of traveling them was kicking up more dust than you could ever ask for… as far as the eye could see. My dream was to be from an exotic land. Why couldn't I have been born on an island surrounded by blue dolphins? I was at the library devouring books almost every day because I couldn't bear how ordinary my life was. Why sit around swatting mosquitoes when I could daydream about tesseracting to other galaxies or secretly observing Mrs. Frisby and her rats who learned to generate electricity or teleporting deodorant off my dresser like the girl with the silver eyes? Why couldn't I live out of a boxcar or go where the wild things were or be one of Mufaro's beautiful daughters? Where was my phantom tollbooth, my bridge leading to Terabithia, my big red dog? By completely abandoning the outdoors for my bookwormish tendencies, I was taking for granted the beauty of what I considered humble surroundings. I could walk to the tree in my grandparents' backyard at any time and pluck off an apple juicier than any I've ever purchased at a grocery store. I may not have lived in a giant peach, but I could walk down the road and pick one, along with blackberries and plums and other wild fruits. I had a series of adventures with my gang of cousins every day and while we may not have found secret doors to fantasy kingdoms, we had the time of our lives. Taking our bikes to the top of the hill that led to my grandparents' house and racing down it at top speed, playing games we had to have made up, wandering into the woods and imagining things to be afraid of... I also discovered that many of the people in my life might have been the basis for characters in the stories I read. My grandmother might have been a queen in some faraway land. As physically beautiful as any woman I have ever seen to this day, she had a regal bearing, a quiet calmness that could not be shaken while raising eleven children (ten of which were girls). I have eaten at four star restaurants, but I would joyfully toss any of those meals in the garbage disposal just to have one of my grandmother's biscuits. My grandfather might have been an adventurer in a Rudyard Kipling tale, traveling the world, rescuing people in foreign lands. Usually reserved and doing whatever he had to do to provide for his family, it was only when I was older that I realized what it truly meant that my grandfather had been a soldier. In the army during World War II, my pah-pah (as all his grandchildren call him to this day) fought at the Invasion of Normandy. He can tell his stories far better than I, so I will resist. My mother and my aunts might have been a collection of sprites from Shakespeare, fairy princesses from the world of Hans Christian Andersen and the evil stepsisters from Cinderella… and which ones were which depended on the day of the week… The rest of the ensemble of characters included a neighbor who might as well have been a troll under a bridge, a great-aunt who certainly would have been inspiration for the Wicked Witch of the West and a distant cousin who bore a striking resemblance to Toad. As an adult, I have become happily resigned to the fact that I am and always will be a small-town Southern girl, heart and soul. No matter where I travel, no matter what big city life I am exposed to, I will actually go up and speak to people to whom I have been introduced. I will always believe that sweet tea is the best drink in the world (and the best sweet tea has about a half a cup of sugar for each bag you use). I'm quite positive I will always address a collective as y'all. And I have come to the realization that as exotic as I always dreamed of being, Southern women are exotic in their own way. Full of what may seem to be contradictions, we can be as sweet as peaches but as strong and stubborn as magnolia trees (an ancient genus, they've been around for millions of years). We can be genteel and still be as spicy as cayenne pepper. We have a sharpness of mind that may be hidden behind an accent full of twangs. We can encompass a full spectrum of characteristics, making us as colorful and plucky as any of my childhood heroines. I love our strength, our wisdom and the stories we hold through our very existence.