Where I’m From by Shellie Rushing Tomlinson

Today’s thoughts come from a writing exercise called Where I’m From. You can use this template to create your own unique biography. (And if you do, please, I’d love it if you would share!)

Where I’m From

I am from gumbo thick farming ground running alongside the Mississippi River, from Pixi Stix Candy Straws and wild blackberries.

I am from a matchbox house on a dirt road soothed by an attic fan with noisy, rhythmic, surround sound breeze.

I am from Grandma’s blue hydrangeas and scratchy green cotton stalks dripping with early morning dew and forming gracious canopies around your head while you chop cuckleburs at their feet.

I am from “Chase Don’t Touch the Ground” in Papa’s equipment shed and “That reminds me of a story”, from Papaw Stone preaching Jesus long and loud, from Mississippi’s Charlotte Ann the Forestry Queen and Louisiana’s James Ed carrying the boot-tough genes of mountain people transplanted to the Delta.

I am from women toting a meat and three sides to fields white unto harvest where busy men nonetheless braked for midday feasts spread across tailgates and tuckered out children napped in foot-boards, vinyl seats, and warm back dashes of moving vehicles, from “sit up pretty” and “drying it up unless you wanted something else to cry about.”

I am from the second pew left hand side, VBS, and “Deep and Wide.”

From stories of a gritty woman birthing number ten, nightgown of number nine secured ‘neath the same bed’s frame, chubby honey coated fingers occupied with a feather. I’m from this anchored boy child growing up and choosing fatherhood after blood parent tired of real world living with a young wife and stair-step girl children.

I am from black and white photos heaped in card board boxes, hymns sung around a well-worn piano, family stories told more times than a few, and long, tall shadows cast by one generation challenging the next to remember who we are and where we’re from.

Shellie Rushing Tomlinson