Picture of the day - July 16, 2007

Going home

Like most kids, I was carefree in my youth, living each day as if adulthood and the freedom that comes along with it lay eons into the future. Back then it seemed like each day that I lived took me no further towards that time when I would be grown up and my life would finally be my own. My, how the years seemed to drag on forever... To get to our Widener Valley, Virginia home you had to leave the hard-top road and follow a narrow, crooked gravel lane about a mile or so until you veered off yet again to head "up the holler" - an even narrower rocky road that afforded just enough room on either side to "dodge" the numerous rocks that threatened to rip off your car's oil pan or muffler. Just getting to our house was quite an adventure, especially in the wintertime when you had to slip and slide through the snow and ice, wheels spinning like crazy as the car fish-tailed back and forth - and you still had to avoid the treacherous rocks! As a youngster, my summers were spent working in the tobacco patch, in the garden, playing in the woods and riding my bicycle up and down the roads that snaked their way through "the valley". I spent a lot of my time with my cousins Mark and Lanie, riding my bike between theirs as we headed down to the river or over to Rush Creek to play in the water and see what kind of mischief we could get into. When one of our bikes broke down, they would fix it on the spot! I was always amazed at how those boys could fix a bike, a lawnmower, a tractor or a car just like their dads. They were accomplished "shade tree mechanics" before they even made it into their teenage years! During the winter we got a lot of snow, and whenever school was canceled for the day I would play outside from morning till night, riding a homemade sled down hills that would give most people vertigo. Mark, Lanie and I would climb one of several tall hills in the valley and take off for the bottom with the wind and tree limbs slapping us in the face, holding on for dear life and laughing all the way down. We were young and foolish back then, and the prospect of ending up dead or in a wheelchair didn't faze us in the least. It's a wonder we even lived to make it into adulthood - but make it we did... Mom and dad had it hard when they lived up in the holler. Dad's back was in such bad shape that he could barely walk, but he still managed to raise a large garden and a tobacco crop to help put food on the table and clothes on our backs. Mom had it even worse, getting up well before dawn to cook breakfast before heading off to work all day in one hot, dusty sewing factory or another. And then she would come home and cook supper before heading out to the garden or tobacco patch herself to work until dark or even later. It wasn't until much later in my life that I realized just how hard my parents had to work and the sacrifices they had to make in order to give me and my bothers and sister the kind of life they felt we deserved. The truth of the matter is they deserved a lot better lives than they had on this earth, but now dad is enjoying his eternal life in heaven and some day mom will join him there and enjoy hers. I look forward to meeting them there myself someday when the Lord decides that it's time to call me home... Well, against all odds, I finally did make it to adulthood - only to realize that my life still isn't my own and it never will be. It really belongs to the people I love and the Almighty God who gave it to me, and I struggle daily as I try to live up to what is expected of me by each of them. But that little farm way back in the holler will always be "home", the place where I grew up and learned what I need to know in order to live my life and worship my God. Yesterday afternoon I went back "home" to look around a bit and take some pictures, and this is what I found... Our little house on the hill is no longer white, but gray, and the front yard that seemed so steep when I used to mow it somehow seems a little more level than it used to. And that tobacco patch where the rows looked at least a mile long as I was pulling weeds so long ago? Well, it's now just a small clearing in the edge of the woods. Actually, everything on the whole place looked so much smaller than I remember. But my memories of growing up in the holler are just as strong and just as precious today as they have ever been. Although I wasn't there for long, it sure was nice to go home.   Visit the POTD Archives for previous "Pictures Of The Day"!     Submit a photo of your own!            Why I publish the "Picture of the Day"