Reading works by Dorothea Benton Frank

At the end of her book, Shem Creek, Dorothea Benton Frank says something like...one of the saddest mistakes you can make is to live (stay) in a place you don't belong...



So, thinking about how much I agree with that statement I thought I would make this blog for misplaced southern belles. That exact title "Misplaced Southern Belles" seems to have been taken already for another blog which makes it clear to me that I am not alone. Are there more of you out there?



I spent the last two days thinking long and hard about being misplaced and staying where I do not belong. I have been trying to move out of my life for two years and find I cannot. It begs the question: is it the place or is it me? Can a person be misplaced or are the just maladjusted?



I lived in Illinois for four years when I was a young woman. Not a day went by that I didn't want to leave. When I finally moved to Arizona it was like a veil was lifted and I could finally see the sunshine again.



Now, I think ,sometimes, that I have an ideal home and situation. I have a beautiful farm and a job where I can choose my own hours. Yet, somehow, I have become distant from my lifelong friends, habits, interests and desires. I feel the culture here is toxic. The people are base and incapable of true connection.



I long for the south. I long for the coastal breezes and the smell of salt air. I miss seeing people dressed up for the day as if it were a special occasion just to be alive. I need some gentility and boundaries. I actually despise the habit people here have of just showing up at my door, unannounced, uninvited and with nothing to do but barge in.



I think my car keys belong in my pocketbook not in the vehicle. I think that thank you notes are always appropriate. I can not believe that no one invites anyone for cocktails, dinner, or over just to play cards or charades. Do you know that when they have a bridal shower in the Midwest, the use folding chairs set in rows, and do not serve a drop of punch (much less spiked punch) until the last gift has been opened and that the bride and bridesmaids wear blue jeans to the shower? Unthinkable.



It is still unbelievable to me even after 8 years here that those same blue jean clad brides have thirteen cousins who have at least one baby out of wedlock and they are lining up all of those overfed and undereducated young women to be bridesmaids. Deplorable.



I tell you if I have to sit down to another Thanksgiving meal where they put noodles on top of their mashed potatoes I think I will just turn in my ticker and ask to line up for the pearly gates.



Anyway, it is summer and I am trying to save a bad crop of tomatoes. After taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 pounds of produce to share with my co-workers last year (with not one thank you or casserole as a return gift) I would have thought someone might have offered a cutting from their favorite flower or an invitation to a fish fry. But no.



I guess I just don't fit in here. I don't belong. I am certainly a misplaced person and though I never thought of myself as a southern belle, I can see now that I am. In my mind and in my past I sparkled, I wore tiarras, I had several types of white gloves. My youthful closet bulged with ballgowns and under my bed were three dress boxes full of dried nosegays and corsages. I went to teas and learned the proper way to cross my ankles and walk up and down stairs. All of this is wasted here. I am forgeting which things should not be talked about, like money and religion.



I want to go home but I don't know where home is anymore.