Lonely Dawn

Lonely Dawn
Originally uploaded by remy fauxtog

It's before work and I'm sitting on the couch missing Birmingham.

My mother called last night and offered to come pick Judge and I up - to take us to the Ham and enjoy the long Labor Day weekend with our family. That means BBQ, lazing around, hanging with Bugsy the Boston Terrier.

But we can't this weekend, we have El. We're traveling to Chattanooga to get her tomorrow. But I think this offer by my mother got me thinking about my hometown. I miss it.

I miss the seasons. They're different there. Even though it's just three hours south on I-65, it's different. Foggier, more humid, and the light - it plays hide and seek over the last of the Appalachian mountains, the foothills called Red Mountain, Oak Mountain, Shades Mountain - they amble through the city like a broken river, showing up gradually and hiding the horizon.

I miss the musty, honeysuckle smell of Alabama. I miss the people. I miss Fred Bonnie's ghost, which haunts me when I go back there, remembering days of western omelettes and short short stories.

Nashville's great - but it's in a bowl. It's at the bottom of the Cumberland Basin and the air's stifled here. It doesn't move the way Birmingham's does. It has a river, but it doesn't have the delicate Cahaba - the river that winds its way through the entirety of the city, almost secretly - and boasts the rare Cahaba lily, only found on the river its named after.

I miss you all. Where Nashville is the reluctant uncle that's agreed to watch over me while I'm here, Birmingham is the mother, the kudzu-covered source of life that I long for sometimes, and I picture myself living there again one day, somewhere in the ancient houses in Southside, on the side of a hill, near a park, with Vulcan watching over us.