Home

​home. Seems like an easy enough concept. Where you sleep. Where you eat, live, keep your clothes. Or is it more? 

Of course it’s more. Home is more than a place. It’s people. Smells. Memories. Sounds. Trees. Water. Terrain. 

Home is something I’ve thought about so much; especially in the past few months. I long for home. I dream about home. I think of every scenario wherein I can be home again. 

Well then, Ames, what is home? My hope is maybe this will be something you can relate to and help me add to. 

Let’s see. Home for me is (in no particular order): 

• Country. Land. Big skies. Hills. Creeks. Preferably Oaksville. Where I know every road, the bumps and curves. Where I can tell you who lives where. Where you pass no fewer than 5 fields of cows grazing and sometimes sheep on the way to where your mama and them live. 
• Smells. Hay, manure. Exhaust. The store with its grease. The hardware store filled with lumber, bug spray, fertilizer, dirt, and tools. Candy being made in Mrs. Drinkard’s kitchen. Mom’s cooking on the stove. Wood piles. Wet dogs. Clean air. Petrichor. Coffee. Wood stoves. 
• Sounds. The sounds of birds. Tractors. Stupid loud trucks. Mooing cows. People gossiping. The holler heard as you go by—“Hey Bo!” 
• Accents. Of the sounds I hear, the familiar sound of the accents of Oakville feel like a hug from my childhood. Appomattox people sound similar to each other, yet every enclave of Appo sounds a bit different. Oakville and Bent Creek are similar, but not as similar to Pamplin and Evergreen folks. The vernacular is similar throughout the county and is rarely heard in Lynchburg or by people not fully entwined in the culture of our small community. I love to hit someone with a solid “whatchu know?” Or “how your mama an them?” Sometimes, I really have to focus on my boy Head to understand exactly what he’s trying to say to me. When my brain slows down, I get it and I just wanna hug his neck for being 100% east Pamplin. 
• Sights. Hay fields. Tobacco fields and smoke filled tobacco barns. Ponds with kids fishing. Big mud puddles that would have called to teenagers everywhere to go rooting in in 1994. Dirt roads. Wildlife. Dogs roaming because that’s what they do in the country. (Dogs = big dogs. Not little dogs; preferably hounds) Trucks with dog boxes and dead critters during hunting season. (Ew, but a good sight nonetheless.) Old trees. Open space. Dark skies. Seeing stars and the actual Milky Way at night. 
• People. There is inherent comfort for me in Appo people. I don’t care if I haven’t seen you in 20 years, I’m going to be more comfortable with a classmate from high school than someone I met at work (who, gasp, ain’t from Appo) or someone I meet along the way of living life. Talking to Appo people is home. Regardless of agreements, disagreements, affiliations with groups of all kinds; Appo people are comforting. I often relay the story of “talking Appo” with my brother Chris while around my nephew, who is genuinely curious and who has never lived the life his dad and I did. Chris, me, and every other kid in Appo grew up with the same kids from kindergarten to senior year (plus or minus the kids who had to move around). Sean never had that. Charlottesville kids are all mixed up and all over the place. The same goes for Troy and Lynchburg kids. All that to say, Chris and I have to catch up on everything Appo at least once a year. Births, deaths, new buildings, what’s going on with church folks, which of dad’s workmates are still kicking, where people are working, who got arrested and for what, and we have to reminisce on the experience that was an Appo childhood. That said, Jessica and I always spend an inordinate amount of time talking Appo. This past trip to the beach we talked a lot about the people that just feel like home. That when we talk to them it brings us back in all the best ways. We looked at so many pictures. We had unearthed tons prior to our trip. We had holes in our timelines that needed filling. There are folks we treasure that we will forever reminisce about just due to our stories being so intertwined. The nostalgia of it all gets us every single time. (Then we would go for our afternoon bar trip and it would go off the rails, but what happens in Turks stays in Turks for the most part…) 

In recalling the treasures of home, I always wonder why I’m so obsessed with going home to stay. I know a lot really goes back to my mom. For a time when things were different, easier, more cohesive for us as a family. Going back home doesn’t change the fact that she’s gone. That our house is now occupied with different people. Nothing will bring her back, bring back the normal that her loss took away from our family. 

I’m lucky in that I do have the joy of working in Appomattox with so many wonderful people who for the most part are “appo people”. I get to see many classmates, church folks from Oaksville, and the kids of these people. I get to hear Claudia and Kelly talk and if I close my eyes, it takes me back to being a kid sitting on the stool at the store while my mom made hot dogs and turned on gas pumps for people. 

For me, I think there is comfort in home. Not ease, per se, because it would not be easy to be home. I know Troy loves his home here in Lynchburg and living in Appomattox isn’t his idea of fun. I think of Appomattox, of living back on a big piece of land in the quiet of the country and know that there would be peace in my soul. 

I realize this line of thought isn’t everyone’s version of home. What I love and consider to be home brings me joy. That said, I know there are many who have totally different experiences. Neither experience negates the other. Which brings me to this thought: what is home to you? Is it a physical place? People? Less or more of the same types of things I describe? I find it a fascinating topic. 

As always, forgive my rambling and my rose colored glasses view of home. It’s where my heart is in this season. And also—hey friend—love you. Mean it. 💜