by the fireflies' light

Just about every day since I moved here, I have stumbled upon some factoid about the north that boggles the mind, and leaves me asking that age old question: What the hell? Like the time I told you that apparently they don't eat biscuits up here. Now if that doesn't make you say what the hell, I don't know what will.

Anyway. Up until I moved to New York in October, I really hadn't ever lived outside the south. I grew up in Memphis, went to school in Kentucky, and sure, I traveled all over -- but I think there are a whole boat load of things you will never realize are unique to yourself or your culture until you actually live outside it. I don't really count my time spent in England in this discussion, because any oddity I noticed about myself there could easily and instantly be written off as an American thing, rather than specifically a southern thing.

So since living here in Yankee-land, the we-don't-eat-biscuits moments have been plentiful, and none less shocking than the one before. I think every time I have one, I unconsciously assume it'll be the last. It's as if I'm thinking, well, that's just about the craziest shit I ever heard so there must not be anything else any weirder these people do/say/have/don't have than that right there.

And then, of course, that assumption is promptly overturned. Repeatedly.

Tonight at work we were chatting about southern-isms and southern culture in the midst of our dialing, and the gal sitting next to me (originally from Michigan) shared that as a child she'd taken a road trip with her family to Alabama, where she remembers seeing fireflies for the very first time. I have said it before with many other things, but y'all, I must reiterate: I'm just not sure I want to go somewhere where they don't have fireflies.

Thinking about catching fireflies in our backyard, chasing after their intermittent glow at dusk, just as the crickets and cicadas were beginning their uproarious night-time symphonies, makes me think of everything that was good and right and pure and perfect about my childhood. The fireflies themselves -- especially the ones who met their maker in a glass mason jar with holes poked in the lid sitting atop my brothers' dresser -- are a synecdoche for growing up in the south. Until you've run barefoot through a yard to catch that elusive light, held it in your cupped hands and peeked through cracked fingers, only to release it and catch another, there is something fundamental about a southern upbringing you may never understand.

I do my best to impart what understanding I can in these conversations, though, and while I may not be able to replicate in words the essence of my entire childhood, I am usually able to bring people up to speed fairly quickly on a few key things. Like grits, for example. The co-worker I was chatting to about all this said, "Well, I don't mind grits, they just don't really have any flavor."

I said, "Flavor!? You gotta put butter in that stuff, baby. Didn't you know that's the whole point?"

At that moment I knew I had just written a book in one sentence, and I shall call it: Southern Cooking Made Simple, by P. Elizabeth Cawein.

cheers,
elizabeth