Where ya from, darlin'?

I've been thinking a lot lately about home and what it's like to really be from a place. Our photography clients ask Doug and me all the time where we're from and I always tell them I was born and raised right here on Mobile Bay. And I've come to realize just how uncommon that is...that a person like me comes back home to put her own roots down in the same place where her parents and grandparents put their roots. It's something I never thought I would do, but knowing a place and feeling connected to a place means more than we know. Anytime I go out to the grocery store or take a walk through our neighborhood (the same neighborhood I lived in for 15 years as a child) I'm surrounded by my own personal history and the history of the people closest to me. It means something to drive by a place and tell a friend, "That's where I used to ride my bike with my friend Anna," or, "That's the treehouse my dad built for me," or "Down there is the railroad my grandfather worked on during the Great Depression." It means something to us...deep down in our soul bellies...to call a place home. Not just a house and the company of those we love, but an actual place. The bay, the beaches, the oak trees....they're the same natural surroundings that inspired by grandparents to paint and encouraged my parents to raise us here. My own children will be the 4th generation of kids to grow up learning to ride a bike along a coastline, swim in the ocean, and throw an anchor from the bow of a boat. We'll get up early and go fishing as a family, like I did with my parents, and we'll be fishing in the same waters, by the same trees. I remember what my town looked like 20 years ago, and my parents tell me how it looked 40 years before that. My dad takes me to the railroad tracks that he walked along to get to school, and he'll be able to show his grandchildren those same tracks. My parents' back-in-my-day stories will have so much more interest and relevance to my children because it all took place right here. I mean, that's pretty amazing, I think. And I think that kind of thing should be more common....people should be more connected to each other, of course (we're desparate for that), but also to the places in which they live. I think it's more important than we realize.