The summer after first grade I traveled to Houston, Texas, to visit my best friend, Katie Rogers, whose family had recently moved there. I was traveling with Lindsay Hines Dehmer who was best friends with Katie’s older sister. Back then, children flying alone could be escorted onto the plane by their parents. By the time our moms left the plane, all four of us were crying. We really wanted to go see our friends, but flying alone had us all worked up.
An older woman seated in front of me turned around and said, “If you’re a good girl on the flight, I’ll let you hold my new puppy when we land. He’s right under my seat.” She was probably worried she was going to have to listen to me and Lindsay crying the whole flight, but it was a kind offer nonetheless.
During take-off, the puppy’s crate slid out from under the lady’s seat giving me a clear view of her Yorkshire Terrier puppy through his thin, wire cage. I kept staring at him when the motion sickness began, trying to focus on how cute he was instead of how sick I felt and how my mom wasn’t there with Dramamine and wet rags. I don’t think the plane had even leveled off yet when I threw up on that poor puppy. Lindsay looked over just in time to see what happened and, with reflexes reserved for a first-born daughter used to keeping a mischievous younger brother out of trouble, she promptly slid the puppy’s crate back under the lady’s seat with her foot before hitting the button to call an attendant.
Neither of us said a word about the dog to the flight attendant, and our friends’ mom whisked us away from the plane when we landed before the lady had retrieved her puppy from under her seat. It should be noted that Lindsay has no recollection of this event, but I will never forget it.
I was reminded of this story while watching my friend Shevie’s daughters telling their friends goodbye at church this weekend. Shevie and her family are moving soon. At the end of the service Sunday, our pastor acknowledged that it was her family’s last Sunday with us and the whole sanctuary let out a soft groan when he said ‘Minnesota.’ Maybe because it’s so far away? Maybe because it’s so cold? They moved here from Vermont, so cold isn’t new to them; but we all know it doesn’t take living in Mississippi long to lose your cold weather tolerance. It’s no surprise that on that February day with a high of 62°, we were a little worried about them.
Shevie, Donnie, and the girls came to our church a fully-formed family of four, with a history we weren’t a part of, and then they made us part of their family’s story. While in Mississippi, they welcomed their long-hoped-for, yet unexpected, baby boy, Emmanuel, and let us share in that joy and be a part of their new memories. Their girls, Alannah and Peyton, made close friends at school and church who will forever be some of the people who shaped who the girls will become. I know that to be true because Katie Rogers moved when I was seven and still when I think of my childhood, I think of her.
When I was little, my best friend moving to Texas was the worst thing that had yet happened in my short life. I’m sure Alannah and Peyton have friends who feel the same way. I still really hate it when people I love move.
My friends Chase and Steven have been gone from Jackson for more than two years now and welcomed their third child in North Carolina, far away from the Mississippi hospital hallways some of us stalked the nights their first two boys were born. It feels like only a small betrayal now, for them to have written a chapter in their family’s story without us there. Although to be fair, Chase almost had the North Carolina baby in the car—so we probably wouldn’t have made it to the hospital to walk the halls before he was born anyway.
It’s easy to ignore the fact that many of the friends I’ve lost to new locales had to leave somewhere else to be a part of my story here in Mississippi. That is not the point. Well, maybe it’s kind of the point. Somebody had to lose them so we could gain them, and now we are losing them to someone else’s gain. This perspective might be the healthiest way to view it, but I’m not that emotionally mature. I’d rather those strangers in Minnesota and Texas and North Carolina not gain the people I like.
None of my friends have moved to Antarctica, so I can obviously still stay in touch with all of them. Even back in the ’80s, my parents let me and Katie Rogers talk on the phone long-distance a few times a year and there were trips to visit each other - thankfully, only one trip involved getting sick on a puppy. These days, thanks to social media, we’re able to keep up with the basics and watch each other’s families grow. I text with Chase every day and got to stay with her family on the way home from another trip this past summer. Our world is so easily connected nowadays, on some levels at least. Texting with Chase isn’t the same as having dinner with her, but it’s better than relying on a few expensive long-distance phone calls a year.
This is pure unadulterated pride, but there aren’t words to describe how much I love knowing that some of my friends who have left Mississippi did so even more begrudgingly than they came. When new jobs sent them down here, they thought, ‘Well, okay - but Mississippi? Why’s it gotta be Mississippi?’ And when those same careers carried them away from us, they tearily took with them mementos of Mississippi, children with southern accents, an unexplainable need to fry things, and a love for this complicated, confounding state that was everything they had heard and all the things and people they didn’t expect to find and love.
Mississippians are hard to shake. Mississippi, in all her imperfect glory, is hard to shake. Our pastor says something I won’t try to quote exactly for fear of botching it, but the gist of it is that we should all hope that we never quite manage to dry off all the water of our baptism. My similar hope for Shevie and her family is that they never quite manage to shake all of the Mississippi mud off their shoes. That they’ll take a little of us with them in their family’s story, and hold it close up there in the cold Minnesota winter.
Oh, and send Dramamine with the girls when they come to visit.
Elizabeth Quinn makes her home in Northeast Jackson with her husband Percy and four children.
