The call came early on New Year's Eve, just as I was beginning my annual revelry of struggling to stay up until midnight. Most years lately, I let midnight Eastern time suffice.
"Bone, this is your Aunt Ida. Listen hon, since your momma and sister are at the beach, Aunt Ida wanted to invite you over for New Year's dinner tomorrow."
My New Year's tradition has been to go to mom's for black-eyed peas, hog jowl, collard greens, and fried potatoes. But Mom, my sister, and nephews (there are two now) had taken a last-minute trip to the coast.
Even so, another year I might have said no, being my usual anti-social self. But not this year. Not this winter. In the span of three weeks, I lost an aunt and an uncle. Then on the way home from my uncle's burial, Fave Aunt was in a serious car accident, suffering several broken ribs and a fractured sternum.
Aunt Ida lives on this dirt road, at least five miles from the nearest traffic light. When I was little, it used to seem so far back in the woods and we'd almost always go at night to visit. Plus it was a dead end. It all made for a bit of a scary place to a kid.
I'm sure that was exacerbated by the fact they had a basement where we hid during the '74 tornadoes. Probably my earliest memory of life. I remember the lights going out and huddling in the dark. Years later I would learn that one tornado had passed within a couple miles.
Driving out there on New Year's Day, I discovered Aunt Ida only lived three-tenths of a mile off the paved road. (I nearly said main road, but you have to take two more roads to get to anything that might even remotely be considered a main road.)
When my uncle retired, or maybe even a bit before, they bought an old bus and customized it for traveling. It would have been the mid
'80s, and I'd never seen anything like it. To me, the inside looked like a rock star's tour bus. I remember once they drove
up through Canada and over to Alaska. Were gone for like 3 months.
My uncle passed on years ago, and as I pulled into the drive, I was struck by how empty the whole place looked without the bus parked there, or the enormous garden which used to stretch out forever behind the house.
My cousin, who's always seemed more like an uncle, and his wife were there. New Year's Day still means bowl games. And we enjoyed watching Auburn lose almost as much as we enjoyed the home cooking. Almost.
It was a quite lovely day.
So lovely, in fact, that I called and invited myself back over for breakfast this past Saturday. This time, I stopped by and picked up mom on the way. After enjoying gravy, homemade biscuits, pear preserves, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and hash browns, we sat and talked.
Well, mostly I listened, as the two sisters went on about growing up, kinfolk, and "whatever happened to so-and-so." They talked of businesses that had closed thirty years ago, houses that were no longer there, of getting a ride up to the highway so they could catch the bus into town. I soaked up all of it.
By the time we got up to leave, morning had become afternoon.
And there at the site of my earliest life memory, I'd made another one.
"We can stop and go to church with your sweet Aunt Ida / Have supper at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Diner / We'll be talkin' 'bout this trip when we're two old-timers..."