The Mason Dixon Line

I was thinking about my week, visiting my family in VA and NC, and going back to my Alma Mater Virginia Tech. I miss it down there sometimes, but I love it here too.

As many of you know my father is from the South, and my mother is from Maine...(I grew up in NH)

My southern husband says I'm "not half bad" I will let you all decipher which half is the not bad half for yourselves, I dare not enter into that debate. (The fact that I was born in Charlottesville, home of the Wahoos…well, I have been forgiven on all counts of that offense, being that I was too young to know what I was doing when I decided to make my entrance into the world.)

But the fact that I am halfsies, I have come to really appreciate some of the differences and the similarities. (Shhhh there are some…As you also may know, the civil war, or the war of Northern aggression depending on which of my grandmothers you are talking to, ended quite some years ago...It can still be a touchy subject.)

I enjoy sweet tea. Not the kind of sweet tea that you get here with just 10 pounds of sugar dropped into your cold tea and it all settles to the bottom, but brewed in so it is just the right amount of sweetness to add ten pounds to your butt while you on vacation with out you realizing it.

I love the BBQ, which down there I quickly learned is pulled pork, up here? It is any meat with BBQ sauce on it… not as good…But there are things here that I love too…

I like not having to “dress” to go to the store. This does not mean that I have made a practice of going to the store in my birthday suit, just with out make up, in my sweatpants and my sweaty “just ran” hair, with my three kids hanging off of every appendage. It is a wonder that they don’t lock the doors before my nastified self walks in, but you know what? There are about 10 other people that look like that too, because we knew that it was more important to get dinner for tonight, than to look good getting it.

I love that in the winter I have snow, and hot chocolate, and actually have a reason other than a 50 degree day to drink it. And I love how nitty gritty the grassroots operation of life is here.

One thing I find interesting is, down there, the Blue Grass music, is very similar to the Irish Music here…(their roots are same…) So when I sing at my church, most of the time people think that I should be in a pub…they don’t realize that I could also be flat footing on a board in my bare feet.

I have been pondering my life in both places, having now lived my life almost equally divided on either side of the Mason Dixon Line.

I will put up with my grandmother from the south thinking that her yard is being invaded by the uglier, meaner, “Northern Cardinal” (not realizing that there is no other cardinal, and is convinced that the “southern,” nicer, prettier one, is their state bird and the northern one is again, aggressing itself into her southern yard)

Because you know what? It is nice to be from both places, and be able to enjoy them both…and that is all I have to say about that!

Y’all come back real soon now, Y’hear?