Laws Of The Lowcountry

The Lowcountry of South Carolina is a little stretch of land that runs along the southern coast, clean on through Georgetown, Beaufort, and Williamsburg. It's a special place; some say its enchanted. It's my home. It birthed me as surely as my Mama did. Yes sir, I might as well be formed of it's sandy dirt and sweet salt air. And the smell of that delicious plough-mud (marsh perfume). Being from that place, there's a few things that I know.

Addressed to another Lowcountry child:

You will have a magical childhood, even if your family is shit-house crazy, which they probably will be. There's something down there in the dirt and the air that is magic, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You'll see hummingbirds and dragonflies and lightning bugs. You'll see heat lightning in every color. You'll see mango sunsets and you'll see great love affairs. You'll probably see some ghosts, too.

You will grow older and you will probably leave the Lowcountry-to go off to college in some big city, to chase a dream or a lover. But you'll come back, trust me child. Once you have our sand in your shoes, your soul wont nevah rest again until you're back in that place of origin.

You will see some of the strangest weather this country has to offer: earthquakes and sink holes, hurricanes that will make the water in your toilet bowls spin and the skies turn green. Sea-twisters that dance off the coast; gales that howl in the night and heat waves like you can't imagine. You'll have four seasons, yes, but they're called "hot, searing, oh-mah-gawd, and cold." And you'll come to love that. You will see miracles in the earth: water that glows with phosphoresence, sand that sparkles, and stars so breathtaking that you could just die from the beauty of it all.

You will have skills that not many other people have, and they will look at you strangely. You will know how to hunt for crabs, how to read the sky for rain, how to tell the tide by the smell of the air. You will know how to cook, can, sew, raise a fine garden, and make a home. You will know how to be self sufficient and economical. Our Lowcountry people ain't cheap, no sir-but they are frugal. You will know how to kill a deer and clean it, and use every last part. You'll know how to skin a fish and fry it. You will know that Old Bay seasoning may as well be gold.

You will have a pride of place-an innate knowing of "home" that few others possess. The Lowcountry marks you as its own, and she is not a mistress that will sign your papers away. She might, begrudgingly, loan you out-but you will always be hers.

You will understand our verbal oddities, our lyrical language. You'll know what "The Line of Suspicion" means, that "coke" can be any carbonated beverage. You will grow old and remember what your own old people told you as a child-their strange sayings. "Hard row to hoe," "Look at that wheel," "not hide nor hair," and "wouldn't know me from a lick of paint," will all make sense to you. You will have colorful language even if you try to hide it.

When you are away from that home, you will grow terribly homesick. You will read books and watch movies that remind you of the Lowcountry. You'll make the foods your women made you when you were a child-even if you didn't really care for them all that much back then. You'll find yourself whipping up a shrimp boil or a pan of chicken and dressing, or a batch of hush puppies just to fight back the tears that threaten to wash you right back to your own shores. You'll call your Mama and have her tell you again, for the hundreth time, how she makes her rice. You will call your Daddy and ask him to explain again just what he does to make his tomatoes so red. And speaking of tomatoes, chile-You will find a whole world of happiness in a tomato sandwich on white bread, with a little Duke's mayonnaise and some salt and pepper. You eat that thing out on the porch though, or over the sink, because that's an outside sandwich.

You will learn to give thanks to anyone with ears, to any soul of vegetable or animal that nourishes you, to the sky for rain, and to the earth for your life. You will be a thankful soul. The Lowcountry teaches you that too. It teaches you that oh lawsamercy, sometimes life is gonna be so damn hard, but it is always so so beautiful. And you give thanks for that. For all your blessings.

You'll be an oddity too, because you will stay up late into the night on the phone with five members of your family on a conference call talking about just about anything. Usually this will be gossip about another relative, or a marathon argument about who hosts Thanksgiving and about the year's color scheme for Christmas. Your family will be your own little government-and though you may from time to time go astray from them, thinking you have some freedom-one day they're gonna pull that little string and you'll launch right back to them. You'll find yourself sitting on your Grandmama's couch even if she's not in this world no more, and you'll realize that you will always be: Lowcountry.

You will know about the Spirit World, about sweet Gullah voices that can call down storms or talk the fire out of your wounds. You'll know that blue paint around doorframes is a charm against haints (which are wicked ghosts). You will know that an upturned broom or a jar of string and nails at door protects you from hags, which are sure to steal the life out of your babies' lungs. Bottle trees and forks hung from limbs bring good fortune, and there ain't nothing that can't be done with a root or a conja bag. You will revere your own ancestors and speak to them like those crazy Catholics do their saints, and sometimes-they will answer you.

You will believe in all manner of things that the rest of the world would call fool, but you'll have the quiet knowledge that life exists in this world and the next, miracles happen, and that love can last forever.