Georgia On My Mind

In the past when people would ask me where I am from, I would temporarily go blank. A fragmented, unhappy childhood had left me like a blank slate. Like an orphan tossed on the seas of life, it seems that I had always yearrned for a place I could call Home. My official Home Town never felt like home, so, where did I come from? Where did I belong? I longed, deeply, to find a place to call my own.

Descendants of German immigrants, my adopted parents where born and raised on farms in western Pennsylvania during The Great Depression. They

married and moved to a small town in Central Florida as a young couple in the early 1950's.  Apparently, Mom could not bare children but I've never learned why. After six years of being on the adoption list, they found an underaged young lady "in trouble" and adopted yours truly. When I was a wee tot, on the rare occasions we traveled to their native Pennsylvania, they would take the time to visit old friends or family still living on farms. I fell in love with the countryside right then and there. I felt a kinship with the trees, the wildlife, the smells, the gentle sounds, the clean air and most of all, the solitude. Even the small town was already beginning to be too much for me. I wanted to enjoy the night stars without the light pollution. I yearned to hear the crickets singing and chase fireflies from a back porch.

Psalms 27:10 "When my father and my mother forsake me, Then the Lord will take me up."

What I share next is not to illicit sympathy but to lay the ground work for this story explaining the reason for my feeling so disconnected. Very rarely do I dwell on this small part of my life. These are only shadows and ghosts of the past. I've given it to God and He has lovingly hidden the hurt away.

I think I was fairly happy as a small child before my mother died in 1966, I don't remember. All I do remember is losing the only mother I'd ever known

that sweltering August day. After the funeral Dad made it abundantly clear he didn’t want me around anymore. It turned my already fragile world upside down. My earliest memory is her funeral with Dad telling me to “Shut up, what do you care?! You’re only adopted anyway.” Yeah, he said that to a grieving 10 year old child. I felt like someone had reached into my chest and stopped my heart from beating. Dad was keen on yelling curse words, snapping belittling remarks (his favorite were I was a bastard, and how stupid I was), open hand slap any body part too close to him, or glare at me for seemingly no reason. I started running away. My grades where failing. I became a bit of a day dreamer. The school psychiatrist was as much help as breasts on a boar hog. Two step-mothers later, things where a little improved. At least the last one was a Christian and wasn't abusive. We had our differences, but still she had a good heart. When I was 14 I gave my heart to Christ in a little non-denominational church. Kneeling at the cross (emotionally) I knew I was a sinner, unworthy of His forgiveness but told Him I believed in Him and to do with me as He will. At least I knew He would never leave me! He gave me the strength to go on. His guidance gave me the fortitude to buckle down, get a good education and get the heck out of Dodge as soon as it was legal. When I turned 18 it was made clear I was no longer welcome in that house. No home there! Frightened and with no confidence in my abilities, I married the first man that asked and in the infamous words of Jimmy Buffett “it cost me much more than a ring“. My first husband wasn’t a bad guy but we where definitely mismatched. He wasn't my 'home' either. Thankfully, we parted on amicable terms without too much damage done.

After all that, my current hubby and I met, then tied the knot. Thankfully, he shared my vision of living in the country. It was going to be a difficult task

since we where living in the Big City, in a State where property was expensive and we are not people of means. Thankfully, by now it was the '80s and times where good. With good jobs and lots of prospects for improvement we worked hard for 18 years. It was exciting to dream and plan. However, even though there can be lots of money to be made in a metropolis, a city setting is emotionally crushing to me. I felt stifled, fought a lot of airborn illnesses, and the stress of living so close to others kept my nerves on edge. I fought the crushing sadness that seemed to follow me like a black cloud. 

In 1981, I was working for a gentleman who was also adopted. He urged me to begin searching for my birth parents. Through his assistance, I managed to learn who my birth-mother was. After many phones calls, letters and false starts I had located her within a few weeks. (Again, God's mercy!) Regrettably, though, I was about 18 months too late to speak to my birth-mother as she had died in a traffic accident not far from where I was then living. But I did manage to make contact with a half sister, two half brothers, several aunts, an uncle and my grandfather. It was a rich and rewarding experience. Trust me, like all things great and small in our lives, this ties in. 

For years we continued the search for land. We wanted that perfect location

where it would be our forever home. On weekends when we weren’t repairing our 1952 Florida home, or out in the woods, we where looking at land. Dreaming about land. Praying for land! I think I exhausted every place in Florida I could think of. Then, I got the notion to start looking in southeast Georgia. One Saturday, after a, what I thought, wasted trip to Reidsville, Georgia, to look at more land for sale, we passed a sign on Highway 121 for a local realtor in Blackshear. It was late so I wrote the number down (this was pre-cell phones, after all) and after driving home, made an appointment for the next weekend to look at property. Short story long [smile], the nice young lady took us city folks all around this postage stamp sized county. It seemed every place I looked at it was “still too close to town”. I guess she couldn't believe that we would want to live so far out. Several available properties later, she finally believed me, and took us out to this place. 

Leviticus 25:23 "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me."

It’s no kidding, as soon as I stepped out of her car, and my foot hit the property, with the towering oaks and pines, the inviting quiet, the simple country road, I knew this was it! My heart sang with joy! Hubby and I prayed for success. God mercifully opened the doors for the loan to go through without a hitch. Then we started down the long, curvy road of making this our permanent residence. It would take almost 8 more years of scrimping and saving but we where finally on the way Home.