That's What I Love About the South

Dear Tallulah-

I can't sleep. I hate that and it's probably because I love coffee so much and try as I might, not to drink it after 4pm, there always seems to be a mug of it left in the kitchen that I sip on, as I did earlier. It is staying light here until almost 10:30, which doesn't help...the sun looks like it's about 5pm when it's really 8pm, so I keep sipping the coffee until it's too late.

As soon as I approach my writing like an assignment, it goes straight to shit. It seems the best writing I do happens when I sit down to fill you in on the latest. I have yet to come up with a whole lot on what happened on my trip to Virginia. It was uneventful and actually pretty boring. Only so much can happen sitting in a home, miles from anywhere, overlooking the banks of a river. There isn't even a paved road after all these years and the closest neighbors are cousins whose house you can't even see by just looking out the window.
Growing up and even into adulthood, my extended family has mainly consisted of the relatives on my mother's side of the family. They all live in Virginia, Georgia and Alabama. My mother belongs to the Daughters of the American Revolution, a strictly blueblood collection of aging debutantes who all can claim some blood line connection to a great, or at least historical figure of the South, before it lost the war. My mother, Elizabeth Tayloe Washington Lewis, is a descendant of George Washington. Her side of the family has it's own 'family crest' and many direct connections to some now famous and historical antebellums, including Sugar Loaf, Woodpecker, Chatterton, Mount Vernon and Monticello.
For some reason, Southerners like to name their homes and the current residence my parents keep is called Imaihama; not exactly blue blood, but more of reference to Japan, where my parents met and having the home named is still in keeping with the southern tradition. Imaihama means 'beautiful beach', so named because the house overlooks the banks of the Potomac river....the same river that George Washington supposedly threw a silver dollar across. The true story is he threw the silver dollar over the Rhappohanoc River, a far less formidable toss by miles.
Anyway, my mother "Betty" grew up among this knowledge and tho our family was in Hawaii, there were certain 'southernisms' that became part of my social makeup. I have often been accused of being a real gentleman, and no doubt this largely the reason why.
I was taught:
Anyone older than you is addressed by "Sir" or "Maam". Period.
Men hold open doors.
Men stand when a woman leaves or sits at a table.
A woman never, never pumps her own gas.
NEVER give a woman a can to drink out of, pour it into a glass. If you are out and about and no glass or cup is to be found, a straw may be a suitable replacement.
A man always walks on the "street" side of the sidewalk when accompanying a woman (A throwback to the horse and buggy days, it being the mans duty to take the mud splashes as a buggy went by.)
A woman never lights her own cigarette and NEVER walks and smokes at the same time. (If you visit the south, you will see that the women who smoke, well, the ones with class, according to my mother, sit, when they smoke.)

The first born male in a southern family is 'special'...just ask my sister, who claims to this day that I was always given preferential treatment, because I was oldest and male....thus groomed as the family's golden child. I live to disappoint, according to my mom.

Every southern family has it's 'black sheep' and most are readily accepted and treated as just eccentric....the uncle that likes to wear dresses....the manic depressive cousin that prostitutes....the mother in law that believes she was abducted by aliens and now wears a tinfoil hat to block their transmissions...the consistently drunk grandmother that "Loves Jesus, but likes her wine".....the aunt that talks non-stop and once consented to Electro Shock Therapy to fix herself (It didn't work....it did something, but not what she intended)
Yes, these are all members of my extended family. Then there is me, the once to be golden child that is gay and lives with a black man. I don't care what anyone from the south tells you about accepting black people....there is deep prejudice that is alive and well and practiced daily. Even the uncle that likes to wear dresses is cool, because he is married, and aside from Blacks, gays are the next on the list of 'lynch-ables".
At this point I would love to insert some witty anecdotes about my recent visit to Virginia, but truth be told, I was bored spitless and found the visit to be more about observing my parents in their old age. They have mellowed, slipped into routines, and even walking into Imaihama, I was struck by the smell....it smelled like my Grandmothers house used to smell! There was a point where I realized that my parents death was not just something that might happen, but became something that is going to happen...and sooner rather than later. Now, mom is a spitfire and will live to close to a hundred if not beyond, like many of the women from her side of the family. Dad, however has already outlived his fathers age by almost 20 years and ALL the ages of the other men in his family by at least a decade. Frankly I think he's too scared to just die because he knows how much it's going to piss my mother off. I remember a day at Seabury when I got a call on the public phone that sat on the lower corner of the boys dorm....a very strange thing since I had been ordered to call home every Sunday...the call was from my mother and she says, "Have you written your Grandmother lately?" I really hadn't and limited my contact to most of my relatives to holidays. C'mon, I was 16. I'm sure I told my mother, "Yes, I wrote last week." She sort of grunted a "Hmmph." and quickly added, "Well, your grandmother is dead. I hope you told her you loved her." ....then click. Mom had hung up. I was 16. I had absolutely no concept of death nor any reference point. I don't even think I told anyone at the time, because I was afraid I was supposed to be feeling something that I wasn't. It was awhile before I felt something, or at least recognized a feeling I could associate as having been produced as a direct result of knowing my Grandmother was dead. It was a shock, I hadn't even thought about her as being old enough to die, Christ, I was 16. Now, I am mentally preparing for the inevitable, my parents are going to die, and there is no way to prepare...no way to mentally steady yourself so that when the news does arrive I will be able to calmly exhale and think to myself, "Thank God, I was ready."
My parents adopted me relatively late in their lives, I was two and my father was 40, my mother 33....old for the time. That makes them, well, old enough now that I am writing this.
*************************sigh*******************************