I cannot imagine growing up in the city, all concrete and bricks. I come from a place where the people grow old the same way the shadows grow long: slowly, so that you don’t realize the season has changed until the nights grow cold. Here, melancholy drips from rooftops like icicles melting in the springtime. Memories taste like honey in coffee, bittersweet. Nighttime is quiet, save for the sound of a lonesome train whistle echoing off the hills.
Places like this make it easy to be a writer. Stories flow from the creek beds and from the veins of the people. These stories remind me not to lose myself to the sunrises and sunsets. These stories remind me there is a beautiful in-between to the rising and falling of the sun. It is in the in-betweens where life is lived and memories are forged. Like the hollers between the mountains, it is in the in-betweens where you learn your lessons.
Each season has an in-between. We fail to notice them most times. There are September days where the sun shines warm, but the air carries the scent of autumn on the wind. Leaves cling to the trees in November, but the nights grow colder. In March, green grass tentatively pokes through snow long residing on the mountainside. May brings thunderstorms to new flowers. These moments in-between bring patience, contentedness, and growth. Although the grass poking through ice promises warmth, we must be content in the present cold. If we wish for each season to be the next one, we cease to enjoy the present one for what it is.
I am not sure if this is wisdom or melancholy. Sometimes I cannot tell a difference. Reading through some of my old scribblings, I am nearly drowning in nostalgia. I attribute my constant state of melancholy to my West Virginia heritage, but I am not sure that is solely the culprit. I lost two of my grandparents at a fairly young age. My grandpa, my Best Buddy, as I called him, died when I was only six. Most people have few memories at that age, but I remember Best Buddy so vividly sometimes, I feel like he is actually here. When I came home from school, he would have a tub of cheeseballs waiting on me. He told me the Cheeseball Truck ran that day. During thunderstorms, I still hear his voice telling me thunder is only taters falling out of a wheelbarrow.
I learned what death was at an early age when I lost him. Earlier than I would have liked. I remember sobbing at his funeral. Any time the preacher would say his name, I would cry even harder. I still cry at night sometimes, missing him, 17 years later. He was only here for one-eighth of my life. That number shrinks with each passing year. Even at six, I knew the memories I had of him were important. Maybe I view them through rose-colored glasses, but that does not negate their importance. I learned what it was like to love someone deeply, to expect to see them every day, to learn about the Cheeseball Truck from them, and then to have all of that cease abruptly. All of this at six years old. That’s when melancholy began to seep into my bones. That’s when I learned it is not the beginning and the end that matter, but the in-betweens. Rather than wishing for the storm to pass, Best Buddy taught me to enjoy the sound of taters falling out of a wheelbarrow.
My memories taste like honey in coffee.
