My Southern Valentine

By Beth Yarbrough

Green fields of Edgecombe County, North Carolina after a storm. Photo by Watson Brown.

My love letter to the South was written and posted a year ago today. It still holds true.

What better day than February 14 to pen a loving word or two about the place that many of us call home?

Ten years have passed quickly since my first Southern Voice post. I had no idea the words would still be flowing a decade later, no inkling that I was about to fall in love with my own back yard (all 800,000 square miles of it) in ways I didn’t yet understand, and truly had no idea why I was even putting my feet in the road.

That was the beginning. I simply hoped the rest of the world would see the South as I did. Today, having now traveled thousands of those square miles from Texas to Maryland, I still have a lot to learn. Along the way, however, a few things have come clear.

As much as we are defined by the tacky gift-shop phrases that few Southerners would ever utter, the rusty pick-up trucks with weeds growing up through the hood, and the brand of hayseed ignorance that seems to give so many people so much joy in knowing that it belongs to someone other than themselves, the South that I know is a much larger and more important part of that picture. It is a deliciously intricate region of graceful and gracious people filled with wit, wisdom, and intelligence (who are not above keeping a mouth full of tobacco juice handy in case some ill-mannered upstart needs spitting on).

And while we do know how to spit, we would much rather give you a hug and invite you home for supper. Our tables are legendary, as are our homes, gardens, riverbanks, mountains, marshes, cities, towns and shores. These things we take seriously. And while it is true that we are a land of deep (and deeply flawed) roots, of stories that aren't altogether pretty, of conflicts that still live in memory - we are also a place of hands and hearts extended in ways not widely recognized or properly articulated.

Years ago, a dear friend, a product of the northeastern US who had never spent time in the South, came for an extended visit. After a few weeks here, the friend offered this observation with no small amount of surprise: “This is not the South that I imagined it would be. There is a warmth here like nowhere else. I am truly shocked - and delighted.”

That was my hope realized, and the encouragement it brought still gets me out of bed in the morning in anticipation of what the next backroad might reveal. I will forever be in awe of the inspiration that this place holds and deeply grateful to have stumbled onto this path. I have said it before, and it still holds true: The South writes her own stories. All I do is show up.