Home Is Where My People Are: The Roads That Lead Us to Where We Belong (16 page)

It probably goes without saying, but I was mighty relieved.

It’s always good to remember that you aren’t nearly as alone as you fear.

I would love to tell you that life was one big praise-and-worship chorus after my road trip in the Crown Victoria, but it wasn’t. I still didn’t have real community or true accountability, and I can’t even say I had a genuine desire to turn from “the sin that so easily entangles” (Hebrews 12:1,
NIV
). I continued to hold tightly to the parts of my life where I didn’t want God to have any say
 
—lest He ask more of me than I was willing to give.

The illusion of control is a powerful thing.

It was a couple of weeks before the Eagle was out of the shop, and when I drove back to Myrtlewood, I found that I was a little reluctant to return the Crown Victoria to Daddy. Granted, nobody would have looked at his car and commented on its beauty, but it was sturdy and it was solid, and I knew firsthand that it was a safe place to be if you happened to be caught in a storm.

As soon as I sat in my car, though, I felt like I was home. The seat belt thingy still didn’t work just right, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the engine overheated. I pushed a few buttons and levers to make sure the air and lights were working, and when I accidentally flipped on the turn signal, I noticed that its delightful, rhythmic chime had taken on a frantic quality, almost like a panicked little bird.

It was just one more thing to add to the list
 
—and it made me laugh. Every once in a while, I reckon, broken stuff starts to feel downright comfortable.

The Screamin’ Eagle and I made it back to my apartment without incident. I was grateful for it, but I knew better than to think that all our issues were behind us. History is a mighty good teacher, and that car had proved that it was high maintenance and unreliable over and over again.

But then again, so had I.

It didn’t really make any sense, but for whatever reason, I continued to love that car
 
—as much as a person can love a big hunk of metal and plastic, at least.

And you know what else didn’t make any sense? The fact that, for whatever reason, God continued to love me.

But I’m so thankful that I knew He did.

I
AM WELL
aware that some people come into this world with a driving ambition and a steely determination to pursue their God-given talents no matter the cost or sacrifice.
Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t, no river wide enough
, etc. and so on and so forth.

I, however, was not born with that particular disposition. Plus, I grew up in the House Full of Practical People, so any grand, dream-chasing pursuit has always struck me as sort of pie in the sky. There have been a few odd occasions when I’ve decided to be bold and speak a goal out loud
 
—something like, “Hey, I think I would really like to complete X, Y, and Z over the course of the next year”
 
—but I’m inevitably embarrassed by how sidetracked I can get on the way to finishing what I’ve started. What’s sad is that I can’t even say I get sidetracked because I become superpassionate about something else. I get sidetracked because Bravo has a new show about wealthy British women or the SEC baseball tournament is in town
or OH WAIT! OUR STEIN MART HAS BEEN REMODELED! WE HAVE TO GO!

I should probably be ashamed to tell you that I didn’t even have to make up those examples.

So, since I’m not what you would call, um,
driven
, my daddy had the good sense to talk with me before I went to college so he could make sure I’d really thought through the process of deciding on a major. To my credit, I
had
given the subject some thought; for most of my junior year in high school, I was dead set on being a psychology major, but then my aunt Chox told me a story about a friend’s daughter who got a degree in psychology and couldn’t find a job anywhere in the country OR EVEN THE WORLD.

It may not have been quite that dramatic. But the thought of not being able to find a job was a serious deterrent. Even for me.

Once I’d put my psychology dreams aside, I shifted gears at the beginning of my senior year of high school and made up my mind that what I really wanted to be was an English major
 
—which was clearly far more sensible than that psychology hogwash. After all, I think most of us know that when it comes to choosing a career, there are few fields more lucrative than the liberal arts.

I will pause at this juncture so you have ample time to guffaw and also chortle.

. . .

. . .

Daddy, who is one of the most sensible people I have ever known, was iffy about the English major and really wanted me to think in terms of what major would provide me with the most opportunities
after
college as opposed to the most enjoyment
during
college. It was a solid strategy, and I absolutely understood why he had reservations about English. He was reluctant, to say the least, to invest in four years of my college education so that one day I’d be able to quote an impressive array of poetry to my manager at the local Blockbuster Video.

I’d say he had some valid concerns.

So one Saturday morning, when Daddy and I were on the way to State
for a football game, he called our college planning session to order and offered some counsel. The first major he suggested was computer science; since technology was growing by leaps and bounds and computers were becoming more common in people’s homes, Daddy felt like I’d have my pick of jobs once I finished my degree. I didn’t say anything as he made his case; I just nodded my head and pictured endless rows of ones and zeros and wondered what good it would be to have a job where I made a bunch of money if said job made me feel dead inside.

His second suggestion was business. Unfortunately, I am unable to summarize what he said, because I quit listening the second I heard the word
business
.

The third career option that he proposed was engineering. Mississippi State has always had a phenomenal engineering department, and thanks to their co-op program, most of their students have jobs lined up by spring of their senior year. I don’t know that they have 100 percent placement, but it’s close, and Daddy thought I’d have some incredible career prospects if I channeled my academic energy in that direction.

We sat in silence for a few seconds after he finished talking, and then I said something profound.

“But, Daddy, engineering requires a LOT of math.”

“Well, that’s okay,” he replied. “You may just have to study a little harder.”

I paused for a second before I responded.

“But, Daddy, I don’t really
do
math.”

“You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it,” he said. He was trying so hard to stay positive, but I could see a hint of frustration along his jawline.

And I understood why. He wanted me to dream big and strive for excellence. It had to be challenging to try to motivate a child whose fallback strategy was to aim low. His intentions were great, but what Daddy didn’t realize was that he was severely overestimating my academic ambition.

Plus, I’d loved to read and write my whole life. If the adage “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should do for the rest of your life” is true, then an English major was the only choice for me
 
—limited employment prospects aside.

So that is what I did. I went to State and I majored in English and I never looked back. The only bump in the road was when I was a sophomore and decided I wanted to double major in English and broadcast journalism so I could work as a news producer like Jane Craig in
Broadcast News
. Certainly you could argue that it was somewhat foolish to add an extra eighteen months to my degree program just so I could imitate a fictional character in my real life, but I was blinded by the prospect of getting to work behind the scenes on a real-live news broadcast.

I clung to that dream for one whole semester.

Eventually I arrived at the conclusion that the idea of an extra year and a half of undergraduate work was deeply flawed
 
—so flawed, in fact, that I skedaddled over to my adviser’s office and reworked my schedule for fall. The double major was a lovely but shortsighted experiment. Daddy agreed
 
—and asked one more time if I’d considered majoring in computer science.

Bless his heart. I couldn’t help but admire his persistence.

Lee Hall houses the English department at Mississippi State, and when I was a student, room 312-B belonged to Dr. Mary Ann Dearing, who just so happened to be the director of teaching assistants, a certified Southern character, and my all-time favorite professor. Dr. Dearing’s office was special because it had not one but two windows that looked out over Drill Field, and truth be told, it was critical to keep those windows cracked open at all times since Dr. Dearing smoked Parliament Lights like a stack. Her deep, raspy voice suggested that she and her Parliament Lights had been close friends for many years, and you’d better believe the friendship was still going strong. In fact, I never walked into Dr. Dearing’s office when she didn’t have a cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth or smoldering on the edge of an ashtray, and as soon as she’d see me standing in the doorway, she’d say, “Sit down, sugar!” while she slowly and noisily pecked away on her nicotine-stained keyboard.

I absolutely adored her.

Dr. Dearing fascinated me because she was such a twist on her
generation’s stereotypical Southern woman. She could certainly speak the language of the Junior League and the Daughters of the American Revolution, but she was also passionate about her career, outspoken in her opinions, and more than a little bawdy with her language. A creature of habit and discipline, Dr. Dearing pulled into her Lee Hall parking space at seven o’clock every morning, at which point she would step out of her car with a khaki-colored raincoat draped around her shoulders and a white thermal coffee carafe in her hands. She’d drink coffee in any form she could find it, but she was partial to Maxwell House French Roast with so much Cremora that the liquid in her Bear Bryant coffee mug resembled melted vanilla ice cream more than anything else. Throughout the day she’d pour cup after cup into that beloved mug, and between the coffee and the aforementioned cigarettes, she pretty much buzzed her way through whatever she needed to accomplish on a given day.

My pre- and post-class visits with Dr. Dearing, which started when I was a junior in her Advanced Composition class and continued through grad school, were often the highlight of my day, and I always walked away from her office with a little more knowledge than when I’d arrived. Dr. Dearing was full of anecdotes and theories and advice, and even though it has been almost twenty years since I last visited her office, I still remember the oddest assortment of her nuggets-o-wisdom:

• Girls either love horses or they don’t. There’s no in-between.
  
• Only children should wear red shoes.
  
• A beef bouillon cube is the key to a really good Bloody Mary.
  
• Rook is a delightful game.
  
• Non sequitur
  literally means “does not follow.”
  
• Punctuation always goes inside quotation marks. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS.
  
• Respond to your students’ papers as a reader. If a student writes an ill-constructed sentence about when her dog died, don’t just mark “COMMA SPLICE” in red ink in the margin. Tell her that you’re so sorry about the dog. The comma splice can wait.
  
• If someone repeatedly travels to Amsterdam on vacation, that person is probably not going to visit the landmarks and cruise the Rhine.
  
• There is no finer dessert than the black-bottom pie at Weidmann’s in Meridian, Mississippi.
  
• If you want to keep your mind sharp, work crossword puzzles and play bridge.
  

Dr. Dearing consistently cracked me up; I’d never known anyone quite like her. But she also challenged me as a writer, and when she supervised my teaching assistantship in the English department while I was in grad school, she never hesitated to call me out and provide a much-needed come-to-Jesus moment when it was necessary.

It was necessary more often than I might care to admit.

Dr. Dearing did something else, too, though I don’t know if she even realized it or gave it a second thought. She jumped all-in with her students, and even when she was so frustrated with them (or me) that she could have run screaming down the center of Drill Field with a cowbell in each hand, she never stopped cheering us on. She fought for us, she inspired us, and she really did love us to pieces.

One fall morning of my first year of grad school, I stopped by Dr. Dearing’s office after I finished class. When I didn’t immediately see her sitting behind her desk in her ancient roller chair (with tweed upholstery, no less), my first impulse was to leave. But since the door was open, the computer was on, and her beloved raincoat was hanging on the coat tree in the corner, I decided she must have walked down the hall for a few minutes. No harm in waiting, I figured.

I took a seat in one of the green vinyl chairs that always seemed to be occupied by one of Dr. Dearing’s colleagues or a former student or a neighbor who was on campus and dropped by with a sack of fresh tomatoes (in Dr. Dearing’s estimation, tomato sandwiches were a Southern art form, and she liked hers on white bread with mayonnaise, a touch of Durkee’s, a smidge of salt, plus enough black pepper to season a porterhouse steak), and after I looked out of one of her windows to see if anyone I knew was walking across Drill Field, I turned my attention to the wall next to her desk.