Dear Georgia,

I realize home is where your heart is, and many hearts are in fact in your thick humid air, but mine? It is here on the salty shore of new england.  It never left.  No matter the eleven states I have resided in over the last ten years.  No matter the memories that are dear in my mind of all those lovely souls I have had the pleasure of meeting.  For a moment I thought perhaps it was the ocean I longed for, but you too possess the beautiful deep blue.  Than there was a time I just knew it was my family I needed.  While i do miss them so, it is much more than that.  For this morning, sitting next to a quiet open window with the dark morning sky blowing this curtain back and forth I can admit defeat.  It is just this place I miss with all my being.  There is nothing more you could do to convince me otherwise.

Here I can roll in the soft sweet grass.  No fears of your flesh-eating insects.  Here I can hear the gentle sounds of the night.  Here I can smell the salt.  Here I can remember that it takes a village to raise a family.  Here I can wear long pants in July occasionally.  And love it.  Nights are cool.  Life goes on minus the drone of the air conditioning system.  Here I take a dip in the sea on a moments notice if my heart so desires.  This place where my mothers gardens climb lattices so tall and bloom flowers so delicate and so intricate it takes your breath away.  This place where the seasons are so real and so ingrained in your body it takes only one days weather for you to know the change is imminent.  This is where I my heart is planted.  This is where I plead with the universe to let me be.  Let me show my boys and the love of my life why I know; I know so truly with every ounce of blood in my body that this is where we are meant to be.

Oh Georgia, you have your highpoint.  I promise, I do appreciate you.  I love your birds.  What is unusual here is par for the course in you.  I love your intensity.  The sounds are loud and high-pitched.  The marshlands vast and desolate but so full of life.  Your oceans are warm.  Your sea life is abundant.  I love the way everybody is a hugger, and a waver.  But, Georgia?  I must tell you the truth.  It is not just you.   You are not the only place where people are on the whole friendly.  Those lies people say about those states up north, about people being cold and quick and keeping to themselves is not truth.  Flying into my little state I saw every single person holding onto their window, smiling looking down at “their” house.  People excitedly speak to one another about where they from or this island here or that pond their.  The joy is contagious.

I promise I will come back Georgia.  But mark my words, there will be a day where we will part ways as well.  While your beauty is staggering you cannot compete.  I have made up my mind.

Yours truly,

The Yankee