Home

I grew up in Florida.  I had no family there other than my mother and father, but it has always been "home" in my mind.  Now that my father is no longer alive, and my mother lives in a city in VA where I have never lived, I wonder where home is sometimes.  Is it Smalltown, VA?  I've made MY home here, that's for sure. 

When friends leave for the holidays, or just a trip "home", I'm always a bit envious.  Where is that place for me?

My father's family is from Bamberg, SC.  Bamberg is about 1.5 hours from Edisto Island, and an hour from Charleston.  Bamberg is the type of town where everyone has one of three last names.  I have one of those last names, my father's mother had another one, and her mother had another one.  So, in effect, I've got all bases covered in Bamberg :)  Is this my home? Bamberg is surely where it all began. 

This is the place where my father's family made their home before the American Revolution.  This is the place where my father's family fought to save their homestead during "the war"......otherwise known as 'the late unpleasantness'. 

This is where Francis Marion (also known as 'the Swamp Fox' ) avoided British capture during the American Revolution.  I am a descendent of the Swamp Fox.  My father was named after him.

(British cavalryman Banastre Tarleton chased Marion for 26 miles & 7 hours & could not catch him. He supposedly said, “Come, my boys! Let us go back and we will find the Gamecock. As for this damned old fox, the devil himself could not catch him!” Thus the nickname “Swamp Fox” because Marion hid in the swamps in the Low Country of South Carolina to avoid British capture.)

(Grave of General Francis Marion.  Belle Isle, SC is the burial place of the Lowcountry's famous "Swamp Fox" general who outwitted the British during the American Revolution.)

Bamberg and Orangeburg are are full of family.  But they are family I haven't seen in years.  People who would hardly recognize me now.  They would only remember the little girl in pigtales who came to see where she came from, long ago.

The family members who I reconnected with at my father's funeral all seem to live in Edisto these days.  Perhaps this should be "home" for me?  I adore Edisto Island.  I would willingly move there if the opportunity presented itself :)  

 

I don't know why today has me a bit nostalgic for "home", but I'm thinking that taking a Holiday to re-visit my roots may be in order in the next month or so.  

"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

-John Howard Payne

"The ache for home lives in all of us,

the safe place where we can go as we are

and not be questioned."

-Maya Angelou

"Home is the place where,

when you have to go there,

they have to take you in."

-Robert Frost

Happy Weekend!

T