I just returned from a visit to North and South Carolina. I’m tired - I drove 600 miles in less than a week and spent all my waking hours in the company of people. My original motivation for the trip was to see my college roommate, Deborah, who has just emerged from a divorce and is shifting to a new life. I haven’t seen her for 18 years. It’s one of those friendships that allows you to pick up dropped conversations from years ago. Dormant memories surface. “You never did like to drive,” I say as I retrieve the rental car keys so we can leave for the Biltmore House and walk in the Gardens. Deborah is suffering from the tail end of a cold, a cold that hit as soon as she moved her belongings out of her old house in Augusta and settled into her mountain retreat. She is low on energy and by the second day of our visit her voice is failing. I talk, probably no more than usual, but her occasional whispered response makes me feel like I’m babbling. So I treat my words carefully. I weigh each one. A zen-like discipline.
We visit Deborah’s sister who lives in Asheville with her husband. Dianne gives me a gift. She has read my book and loves it. She drags me over to the independent bookstore, and demonstrates for me how to chat up the bookstore clerk about placing my book in their store. We leave with instructions and contact information, and Dianne promises take a sample copy back for the owner’s consideration. When I thank her, she just says: “ It’s a great book and more people need to read it.” Her generosity is disarming. How can I not believe her?
Asheville fits nowhere in my memories of the South. It reminds me most of Madison - an island of creative living surrounded by a sea of determined resistance to change. There are several vegetarian restaurants (we used to have more of those in Minnesota, but most have had to cave to midwestern tradition and now serve free range chicken and grass-fed beef), art galleries, craft shops. Deborah tells me that a North Carolina legislator called Asheville “a cesspool of sin.” The warm spring breezes had lulled me into a flirtation with the idea of living in Asheville, away from Minnesota’s 6 month winter, but there is comfort in not having to be mortified by all aspects of your state’s politics.
I remind myself that North and South Carolina are at their best in May. It is warm and sunny, but not yet hot. Spring green has not yet been crisped into August brown. As I drive south to Clemson on winding mountain roads, I pass numerous Baptist Churches, one with a tent revival going on out front, another with a sign that says: “God gave us Freedom. Soldiers protect it.” No chance of reviving my sudden rapprochement with the idea of living here.
Clemson itself is at its most lovely. School’s out, traffic is light, gentle sun shines through the tree canopy in Larry Abernathy Park, a new-to-me stretch of green space at the edge of downtown. The lake is full and people are enjoying the holiday weekend swimming, boating and fishing. My friend Joan and her husband show me the highlights of Clemson’s new face - mostly new University facilities - and drive me through the shaded winding streets of old neighborhoods. Then they take me out to dinner at their favorite restaurant in Seneca where the chef serves me a perfect seared tuna fillet on seaweed salad. I have a similar sensation to the one that surprised me in April when I was in Germany. It’s nice to be here to see the new and the old, but it has nothing to do with my real life. I have finally arrived in the here and now.
PS: After I moved away, I developed a liking for these on a trip to Florida. It never occurred to me try them when I lived in Clemson. Too local?
When I returned from Germany, a friend told me of the pilgrimages she makes, whenever possible, to view pages from the St. John’s Bible. Back in the nineties, a calligrapher from Wales and the Benedictine Monks of St. John’s abbey in Minnesota began a project to create a new illuminated version of the Bible. The result, my friend told me, is visually stunning. Intense colors, bright gold and platinum leaf on vellum - she goes out of her way to view pages as they are exhibited around the country. She goes also because in her early life, the Bible was central.
I suppose it should have been obvious to me that my frequent sojourns in Germany are pilgrimages as well. This time, as I tried to plot a course between my father’s hometown of Gera and my own Krefeld, I realized I have traveled this path so frequently that I struggle to find new sights along the way. I have gone as far north as Lüneburg and as far south as Ulm between the two points. Our trip to Nördlingen and Trier via Speyer was a compromise route, but it was filled with history and art. When I tell my cousin Ulrike about my travels through Germany, she marvels that I know the country much better than she does. She’s a passionate traveler, but she is attracted to Thailand and Bali. For short trips, it’s the south of France.
I know Germany far better than I would if I lived there. If I had stayed, I would be drawn to more exotic places too. Germany is an easy, comfortable trip for me. I can slip on my alternate language and culture. In fact, I feel so secure, I don’t need to plan the trip in detail. But something was different this time. This was the first time I didn’t ache with longing to merge with the land. It didn’t bother me that I have to struggle to express myself; that some words refuse to leave the deep storage of my brain without coaxing. I even asked for help a few times. Maybe something shifted with the publication of my book. Germany will always be where I grew up, but it is no longer home.
But I am drawn back, over and over again, not because Germany is visually stunning, but because the sounds and sights connect me to a deeper past. The other reason is that it’s the only place where there are people that have known me, however distantly, all my life.
Here I am with my cousins Ulrike and Mareike.
