Time has changed so much, but not the fact that our grandmother is still the heart of our Thanksgiving dinner.
Listen to the author reading this story here:
Courtesy of Tracy Clayton
Everyone goes home, but Southerners go down home.
Down home is where you started. It is where your bones were formed, where your spirit decided on your particular self as its vessel. If it weren't for down home, you wouldn't be you, because your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents would never have come together. Down home is the mouth of the river that you became.
Home holds your things; down home holds the rest of you.
I didn't have my own down home until I moved out of the house I grew up in with my mother, bother, and grandmother in Louisville, Ky. I found myself in Philadelphia working a random desk job after grad school didn't work out for me. At the height of my then-undiagnosed anxiety disorder, my every day was spent on the constant brink of panic, lungs and heart in an unending riot. Going home was a chance to give my brain permission to relax and indulge in everything that feels good: naps that last too long, hugs from my mother, and, during the holidays, food. Copious, ridiculous amounts of food.
Courtesy of Tracy Clayton
