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Is Home What You Remember? Can You Ever Really Go Back?
Life brings death, and death brings life.
January 23, 1980, a little girl was born in the bedroom of a cabin in a holler. In the woods of Kentucky. There was no running water, no telephone, or neighbors nearby to help in an emergency.
There was only my father and my mother. No doctor, no nurses. The birth record would not be recorded for 5 years when I would enter elementary school.
I never thought I would live as long as I have, considering how I came into this world. Neither of my parents was from Kentucky and did not have family there. They were foreigners, the ones who did not belong.
Did they ever fit in? I will never know. I know that people still remember my family there and the tragedy that happened to this day. They still are there as well.
The only place I have ever called home until this year. I visit yearly or twice a year. The homestead has been abandoned since we moved away, and my family sold it to pay for my father’s funeral expenses.
The house sits on a dead-end road with only two remaining families. I know this because I was there in May.
I went alone, and just driving by the old driveway gives me the heeby jeebys. Yet the memories of growing up there…
