my black family... north versus south
So my family is centrally based in the south, North and South Carolina to be exact. A majority of my family still lives down there, all my mom's immediate family, most of the great-aunts and uncles and 2nd 3rd cousins and so forth on both sides. There are a good amount of us though that weren't raised down there and never lived in the South at all. All of our experiences came from long summers, family reunion and homecoming revival at grandparents and thems home church (like I mentioned before my grandparents on both sides grew up together so my family is interconnected-- not inbred lol in a lot of ways).
Like I mentioned in other entries in this "series" I was a pretty spoiled kid when I was younger and not used to certain things, citified as my aunt likes to call me. I wasn't a girly girl, because I was all about my he-man and transformers but I wasn't the outdoor playing with mud type of the girl. My extent of outdoor life was fishing/sailing on my dad's boat, picnics/cookouts, the park, running through the grass barefoot catching lightning bugs and getting in the pool. So going to South Carolina was hard on me.
We'd rotate summers, some years my cousins would come up and we'd go to Wild World (which turned to Adventure World and is Now Six Flags America) and we'd tour the monuments and museums, go to the beach, go to our summer house and my parents would even let us get on the metro and go explore DC. Occasionally my mom would send me down to Charlotte to stay with my them. Either my uncles would come get me or my brother would take me when he was going to school for football camp. I'd be there about two or three weeks and then my mom would get me when she'd come down for homecoming revival. The time in Charlotte was fun, my aunt would always have stuff for us to do... we'd go to the pool, spend days at Carowinds and rotate between my other aunts and grandma's house having slumber parties and hanging out. It never failed that at some point my cousins and I would get sick of each other. We'd start arguing over who's city was better DC or Charlotte and catch an attitude. But one thing that remained true was we all hated going to South Carolina lol.
Even though it was like an hour away it was a world apart. My grandma and her kids were always looked at as being uppity (because after my grandpa died she decided she wanted a better life for them so they left S.C. and moved to Charlotte) so a lot of the hater tendencies seemed to pass down from my moms cousins to their kids who were our age. Like I said in the hair post a lot of them hated for that reason, a lot of the kids disliked us because we were smart (whenever we had reunions they'd recognize kids on honor roll and my cousins and I were ALWAYS up there), or they didn't like us because we weren't feeling their space.
I'll admit my cousins and I hated South Carolina, we hated the heat, we hated having to visit the house where our parents grew up and hearing the stories of how they used to pick berries and plums in the woods and spend the day hiding in their treehouse in the woods reading and eating their treasures, we hated having to do the rounds to some of the older relatives houses (who we had to visit during the day due to lack of streetlights. We hated feeling all dusty cause the roads weren't paved (just got paved in 2000), we hated the animals everywhere and most importantly we hated the damn heat. As I grow older I can appreciate some of those things especially seeing where and what my mom came from. But then I wasn't feeling it.
My cousins and I would sit in the car with the engine running and the A/C on until one of our parents would come give us the spoiled/anti-social/ungrateful speech. Then we'd go outside and sweat and play jumprope and eat ice cream and play with the other kids until something little would happen and we'd start to fight with the 2nd and 3rd cousins. Then it became a North vs. South Carolina thing a my family versus their side thing. then all of a sudden I wasn't from DC anymore, I was arguing why North Carolina was better then South Carolina.
It's really funny how little things like geography make a difference in the dynamics of a family. How where we live and spend our time shape who we are. My cousins and I don't have the DC vs N.C. thing anymore because we are grown and we both appreciate the things about the other place now. We even don't really care about going to S.C., we'd rather not go but it's not a pulling teeth situation. But the weird thing is our 2nd and 3rd cousins who are grown in their twenties still feel the need to challenge us and tell us how we are uppity and from up north.
Could it be that we've found a place where we can flourish and develop and grow. Is it that being where we are in a larger and crowded place coming to a more peaceful area helped us to appreciate what we have and where our family came from. Or is it that they feel like we think we are better because our family sees where they call home now as a piece from the past that they've risen from.
It's not a competition, a race or a challenge between us but they still see it that way. It's passed on from generation to generation and we can even see it in the kids. It shouldn't be a guilt trip placed on those that have left their "roots" in order to create a better life and those there should know that if they are happy no one is trying to force them to live their rural surroundings. Will people see that we are really just one big unit, scattered in different places doing different things in our lives. That location shouldn't matter but that we are one big black family.......
Like I mentioned in other entries in this "series" I was a pretty spoiled kid when I was younger and not used to certain things, citified as my aunt likes to call me. I wasn't a girly girl, because I was all about my he-man and transformers but I wasn't the outdoor playing with mud type of the girl. My extent of outdoor life was fishing/sailing on my dad's boat, picnics/cookouts, the park, running through the grass barefoot catching lightning bugs and getting in the pool. So going to South Carolina was hard on me.
We'd rotate summers, some years my cousins would come up and we'd go to Wild World (which turned to Adventure World and is Now Six Flags America) and we'd tour the monuments and museums, go to the beach, go to our summer house and my parents would even let us get on the metro and go explore DC. Occasionally my mom would send me down to Charlotte to stay with my them. Either my uncles would come get me or my brother would take me when he was going to school for football camp. I'd be there about two or three weeks and then my mom would get me when she'd come down for homecoming revival. The time in Charlotte was fun, my aunt would always have stuff for us to do... we'd go to the pool, spend days at Carowinds and rotate between my other aunts and grandma's house having slumber parties and hanging out. It never failed that at some point my cousins and I would get sick of each other. We'd start arguing over who's city was better DC or Charlotte and catch an attitude. But one thing that remained true was we all hated going to South Carolina lol.
Even though it was like an hour away it was a world apart. My grandma and her kids were always looked at as being uppity (because after my grandpa died she decided she wanted a better life for them so they left S.C. and moved to Charlotte) so a lot of the hater tendencies seemed to pass down from my moms cousins to their kids who were our age. Like I said in the hair post a lot of them hated for that reason, a lot of the kids disliked us because we were smart (whenever we had reunions they'd recognize kids on honor roll and my cousins and I were ALWAYS up there), or they didn't like us because we weren't feeling their space.
I'll admit my cousins and I hated South Carolina, we hated the heat, we hated having to visit the house where our parents grew up and hearing the stories of how they used to pick berries and plums in the woods and spend the day hiding in their treehouse in the woods reading and eating their treasures, we hated having to do the rounds to some of the older relatives houses (who we had to visit during the day due to lack of streetlights. We hated feeling all dusty cause the roads weren't paved (just got paved in 2000), we hated the animals everywhere and most importantly we hated the damn heat. As I grow older I can appreciate some of those things especially seeing where and what my mom came from. But then I wasn't feeling it.
My cousins and I would sit in the car with the engine running and the A/C on until one of our parents would come give us the spoiled/anti-social/ungrateful speech. Then we'd go outside and sweat and play jumprope and eat ice cream and play with the other kids until something little would happen and we'd start to fight with the 2nd and 3rd cousins. Then it became a North vs. South Carolina thing a my family versus their side thing. then all of a sudden I wasn't from DC anymore, I was arguing why North Carolina was better then South Carolina.
It's really funny how little things like geography make a difference in the dynamics of a family. How where we live and spend our time shape who we are. My cousins and I don't have the DC vs N.C. thing anymore because we are grown and we both appreciate the things about the other place now. We even don't really care about going to S.C., we'd rather not go but it's not a pulling teeth situation. But the weird thing is our 2nd and 3rd cousins who are grown in their twenties still feel the need to challenge us and tell us how we are uppity and from up north.
Could it be that we've found a place where we can flourish and develop and grow. Is it that being where we are in a larger and crowded place coming to a more peaceful area helped us to appreciate what we have and where our family came from. Or is it that they feel like we think we are better because our family sees where they call home now as a piece from the past that they've risen from.
It's not a competition, a race or a challenge between us but they still see it that way. It's passed on from generation to generation and we can even see it in the kids. It shouldn't be a guilt trip placed on those that have left their "roots" in order to create a better life and those there should know that if they are happy no one is trying to force them to live their rural surroundings. Will people see that we are really just one big unit, scattered in different places doing different things in our lives. That location shouldn't matter but that we are one big black family.......
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