Home

Today I finished-- in less than 24 hours-- Toni Morrison's latest book, Home.  I thought I was captivated by the Hunger Games trilogy last month or even caught up last week in My Name is Mary Sutter, the historical fiction by a first-time novelist whose name I've now forgotten, but no, this, this Home was a truly great book.  It was as if I were reading a really, really long prose poem.  The heart-wrenching characterization, the storyline at once fantastic and familiar, and the language so beautifully crafted, my mind would say in hushed reverence as I re-read a choice line--wow, that's exactly how she must have felt; so true; or just beautiful.  Letting the words roll around in my mouth as I read them slowly aloud:  "Color, silence, music enveloped him.  This feeling of safety and goodwill, he knew, was exaggerated, but savoring it was real"  (118).  This after a wonderfully painted image the main character, Frank "Smart" Money sees as he has returned to his small, backwoods hometown in rural Georgia, seeing it perhaps for the first time.

In describing the town's women who nursed Smart Money's sister back to health:

Laziness was more than intolerable to them; it was inhuman.  Whether you were in the field, the house, your own backyard, you had to be busy.  Sleep was not for dreaming; it was for gathering strength for the coming day.  Conversation was accompanied by tasks:  ironing, peeling, shucking, sorting, sewing, mending, washing or nursing.  You couldn't learn age, but adulthood was there for all. Mourning was helpful but God was better and they did not want to meet their Maker and have to explain a wasteful life. (my emphasis)

Expert description interspersed with lines of wisdom poetry.  Even the dialogue reaches this consummate level, as in this exchange between one of the women described above and Smart's baby sister, Cee:

"Misery don't call ahead.  That's why you have to stay awake--otherwise it just walk on in your door,"
"But--"
"But nothing.  You good enough for Jesus.  That's all you need to know."

Of course, the protagonist's experiences as a black veteran of the Korean War adjusting to life in a racist America are not ones to which I can relate, but his feelings about home I share.

When my sons and I turn on the country road to my parents' home (before them my maternal grandparents' home) and they see the sign, they shout:  "There's the cow crossing sign!!!  We're here; we're here!  We're at Mawmaw and Daddyghee's house!" (one thousand gift:  #120).

Today as I was stir-frying and steaming the vegetables both friends and church members had shared, I smiled at how different my preparations were from my mother's and grandmother's.  No bacon grease skimmed from Saturday's breakfast or ham hock frozen from Easter dinner.  Squash, onions, bell pepper, broccoli sauteed in EVOO and green beans, snapped and steamed.

As I was "fixing" the green beans for the large pot, I could smell the earth, a light musk similar to petrichor or the breeze from the barn on a sweltering afternoon in July.  I held a handful to my face and I was home for a moment in my grandmother's den, watching my grandfather shell peas in his tan khakis, ironed and belted every morning by Grandmama and laid out on the chair next to their bed.  His fingers more nimble than mine have ever been (even on somewhat difficult piano arpeggios).  He would watch sports while he worked, sorting the brown from the white almost subconsciously, talking to the television, taking handful by handful out of the crinkly paper sack at his feet and filling the baking pan with the light-colored field peas which are, to this day, my most favorite vegetable of them all.  (one thousand gifts #121 and 121:  the smell of freshly picked beans and memories of Grandaddy Martin)

We're going home for a week and a half on Wednesday, and I can't wait!