Voices of Home

“To me, home was never a place; it was a feeling.  It was the way the people I loved said my name.”

I read this quote on Facebook and dissolved into a salty puddle.  I had just come off several weeks of emotional intensity so unyielding that I almost decided to run away to some remote town in Montana where no one would find me and become a waitress in a little diner; just go and live the simple, undetected life. Ridiculous, I know. One of the kids would sniff me out eventually.

Anyhow, ever since reading that lovely piece,I’ve closed my eyes and brought back those sounds; the different cadences, inflections and notes of my parents’ and grandparents’ voices.  All beloved, and the ones who meant “home”. For instance:

My maternal grandmother, Ynez. Pronounced exactly the way it looks – “Y-Nez”.  (My grandfather’s brother married a girl named Inez.  Ynez and Inez.  Only in the south!) I can close my eyes right now and hear Grandmother’s distinctive voice calling me by the nickname she and my mom used, “Sue-Sue” – given to me as an infant because I was born with skin so olive that I was nicknamed “Sue-Sue the Indian Maid”. Grandmother called me that until I seemed to outgrow it. I also outgrew the olive skin, much to my dismay.

It was to my Grandmother and Grandfather’s home that I was sent for weeks during a summer vacation, or when my parents both came down with hepatitis.  I was an almost pathologically shy child, so much so that any sort of new environment sent me into hysterics.  However, stepping into their home on Bell Avenue in Kannapolis was soothing and calming.  I knew I was safe there; I knew I was loved.  Grandmother was responsible for so much of that.

I can hear her voice as I would come in the back door of the house, having just arrived; “Well, hello there, Sue-SUE!”  And I would be enveloped in one of her wonderful hugs.  She smelled of a combination of the Revlon Moondrops moisturizer she always wore and the Camay soap she used.  The hug would be accompanied by a kiss on the cheek, leaving a red lip print.  And just like that, I was home and in the embrace of my grandparents.

When I woke up in the morning and my thick brown hair needed brushing, I would hear “SUE-Sue, your hair looks like an R-A-G-G M-O-P-P ragg mopp!  Let’s get that brush, honey bunch!” Points to anyone who gets the R-A-G-G M-O-P-P reference.

If we were getting ready to go somewhere, she would call:  “SUE-Sue!  Let’s go, kiddo!”  And off we would go, either to the grocery store or to the bank in her blue-green Chrysler Imperial, a car that was to me so beautiful and luxurious I was sure my grandparents were rich.  And Ynez herself was always stylish, not a brown bouffant hair out of place, lipstick perfect.  I never saw her wear pants in or out of her house, and she always wore heels, even though she had a hip deformity that must have made wearing those shoes painful. 

If I had been outside playing in the backyard until dusk, and needed a bath:  “SUE-Sue, you need a bath!  Shoo, kiddo!”; shoo being one of her favorite expressions.

She loved reading the Erma Bombeck and Ann Landers columns in the local newspaper, and if she found something particularly funny in them she would relate them, laughing hysterically until she became breathless.  We were all expected to understand exactly what she was saying when she couldn't talk.

Once my grandfather, H.B., came home from work, things would begin to wind down for the evening.  His was and is another voice that meant security…H.B was a little more reserved, and he could be stern.  He was an AVP in Finance for a local textile mill, and wore a suit and tie every single day of his life.  He even looked corporate in his pajamas.  However, under that stern, corporate exterior was a heart of mush.  My grandparents had a little Chihuahua mix named Butchie that they adored.  Every single night, my grandfather would pick Butchie up, take him into the kitchen and give him a little bowl of ice cream when I got one.  Pet chocolate marshmallow ice cream.  For the record, Butchie hated us grandchildren, and for the most part we gave him all the room he wanted.

In early 1966, my parents separated, and my mother took us home to Bell Avenue.  My grandfather paid extra attention to my brother, knowing that Lee missed our father.  I began to feel a little shunted aside.  However, I didn’t know how closely he was actually paying attention to me.  On television I had seen a little doll called “Twinkie”, manufactured by Marx.  She was a little rubber doll with rubber clothes and interchangeable wigs, and though I never said a word out loud, I wanted that doll.  Granddaddy must have seen the look on my face during a commercial, because several days later he came home from work and handed me a bag from a local department store.  He bought “Twinkie” for me.  He had the sweetness to give me something he knew I wanted but for which I wouldn’t ask.  I’ve never forgotten that.

Church was an integral part of their life.  Saturday nights would roll around and Grandmother would say, “Sue SUE, time to polish your shoes for church tomorrow!  And get a good bath and wash your hair!”  The next morning, we would get in the Imperial and drive the short distance to First Presbyterian, where Granddaddy was an elder and taught their Sunday School class.  I was always a little shy about going to the class for my age, so Grandmother would take my hand in her white-gloved one, walk me to Mrs. Goodnight’s class, and say – firmly – “Susan, don’t worry.  I’ll be here to get you.” I never doubted her.  To this day I can feel her gloved hand around mine.

There is one other voice from Kannapolis that is so much a part of my life. My cousin Cathy – only a few months younger than I – was quite often at our Grandparents’ home the same time as I.  She was blonde and slim while I was chubby and dark, outgoing while I was the opposite – but we loved each other unreservedly.  Around the time we were six or seven, the commercials for “Raid!” aired on TV – if you’re old enough you remember hapless bugs opening the door to a can of Raid – and we made a game out of that, one of us being the bug, the other the insecticide.  We did that for hours, incorporating our younger brothers and sisters if they were around.  I can hear it now, we children who played the bugs screaming "RAID!" – and bless her heart, it was rare that our grandmother ever threw us out of the house as we played.  I know without a doubt that to this day, for her own reasons, the voices of Grandmother and Granddaddy meant “home” to Cathy as well.  Her voice still says “home” to me, whether we are texting emailing, or talking on the phone.  She sounds like Grandmother – her laughter, her inflections.

I have children and grandchildren.  My children and I laugh, we talk, on occasion we yell.  A couple of them delight in making fun of the way I say their names.  But I hope to them that my voice means “home” to them, and that the way I pronounced their names will one day be a source of affection, warmth and love.