She Magazine JULY 2016 | Page 122

Cookie Cawthon contributing writer

This Land is My Land

P erhaps it ’ s a consequence of being a farmer ’ s daughter . Or maybe there are dirt granules in my DNA … a Darwinian adaptation for an agrarian people . I ’ m not sure . But , I find myself undeniably magnetized to dirt roads and crop rows .

“ I will never , ever marry a farmer ,” I staunchly declared as a self-absorbed girl . Mainly because I abhorred our garden and its sweat and bees and dirt clods and swollen bean pods . My unique , almost affectionate , disdain for gardening has survived the decades and can still incite an outbreak of hives at the flashback of green thumbnails , soggy and worn to the quick . Shelling isn ’ t for sissies .
My childhood happened under the thick , sweet tang of curing tobacco . A cherished aroma I am unlikely to experience again . I would ride my bicycle to the barns in search of my dad or my papa long before cell phones made everyone always accessible .
Don ’ t allow my nostalgia to mislead you ; I hated growing up on a farm . I dreamed of living close to friends and stores and school . Transportation was the crisis of my youth ; no one was ever headed my direction unless they were coming to visit . Summer mornings often began in the dark - my nana ’ s solution to beating the heat as we collected beans and peas and squash and okra and cucumbers and peppers from dew-damp bushes . We rarely vacationed because summer months were the busiest and required the most attention .
Needless to say , my ticket to Clemson opened the door to the novelty of proximity . I could walk everywhere ! Sitting in a Southern literature class , we explored the “ sense of place ” characteristic of the genre . Most writing set in the South has historically carried a weighty tie to a place . The same is true of country music . Red dirt roads and churches and rivers and farms and bars . We are a people whose internal compass has a strong sentimental draw towards home .
My papa ’ s funeral was the most poignant expression of this dirt in our blood . He soldiered and worked the land ; that ’ s how he spent his life . During our celebration of him , the pastor unpacked rich metaphors of reaping and sowing , tending and harvesting .
A biblical study of the heart of a farmer . Perhaps the soil in our genetic fabric is a reflection of Him whose hands fashioned us from it .
And , as unfortunate irony would have it , I now long for time on the farm . I pull off while driving and snap photos of breathtaking lengths of green stretching towards weathered barns , gradually combed by a sluggish tractor . When my soul is worn thin and thirsty , I call my parents and schedule some farm therapy . My dad gases the four-wheeler and I drive the dust for miles . There is only me . And the Spanish moss . And the hawk that lumbers from tree to tree just ahead of the whine of my machine . The swamp that has overflowed its bed sprawls across the way . The short-sighted mama turtle burying her eggs in the sand mound between the tire tracks in the road . It ’ s just us . When stopped , the warm , wet blanket of humidity is heavy , but at faster speeds I break the moisture barrier where the air is almost fresh with a chill . My soul inhales .
I now live less than ten minutes from the local mall , scores of restaurants , friends ’ homes and my daughter ’ s school . The closeness I always desired . Its convenience is valuable and appreciated , but we weren ’ t constructed for convenience . Our constitution , instead , hungers for beauty , serenity , creation and space . Mine now has an appetite for dirt . Trees and wildlife . A pond and deer and beaten paths through the woods .
As Chris and I glimpse a new life stage – empty nesters in just seven years – we have started dreaming about our sense of place after the girls are gone . Forget the fact that I have put in requests for a beach getaway , a mountain lake house , and a downtown condo ( What can I say ? I have an enlarged sense of place …). The one I feel in my bones is a farmhouse on forty or so acres . A place for our children and their families to come and breathe . A place for some farm therapy .
And you just wait and see . Before it ’ s all over , I ’ ll have my watch pinned to my shirt , like my dear nana ( to protect it from the moisture ), rolling butterbean bushes in the new of a summer morning . Circular completion .
124 JULY 2016 SHEMAGAZINE . COM