For an 8-year-old, it seemed like a lot of work, but I didn’t mind, because it seemed important.
My father and I left Meridian, Miss., early one morning on a mission to plant pecan trees. My father’s job kept transferring us to different places — Meridian was the fifth city where Southern Railway had sent him — but planting the trees held the promise of something more permanent.
I don’t remember how many trees we planted that day, but it seems as though there were around a dozen. We were planting them on land which we had inherited after my mother’s father had died. He had owned a farm in the country — where my mother had spent her summers when she was younger — and we now owned part of that property after it had been divided between his three children.
My father’s plan was for us to move there one day. We were planting trees for what would be our future home.
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
Economic Man needs no heart, because love and God are dead
Leave your dead past behind; that’s not where you’re going
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
How could a stranger at sunset possibly know what I had to say?
Getting better at all I do is only way to fight ‘imposter syndrome’
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone