Browsing: OurMSVoices

It’s funny how the changing seasons bring back childhood memories. It’s even funnier that those memories grow more important in each season of life. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time believing we’ve already made it to November. It seems like we were just complaining about the Mississippi heat, and now we’re making Thanksgiving plans and wondering how Christmas managed to sneak up on us again. Somewhere between work, family obligations, school schedules, and the endless demands of everyday life, another year has nearly slipped through our fingers.

I came to a startling realization this past weekend, a realization that made me want to take a trip back in time to my Mississippi childhood.

This past weekend in Oxford, we finally pulled it off. “We” is a group of five old friends who had attended Ole Miss together back in the day, and have been wanting to try to all gather at once for some time. If we could make it happen, it would be the first time in 55 years that the entire bunch had been together, and we finally did it, centering around the Ole Miss-Missouri football game on October 17.

Can you believe it? As August drew to an end, I found myself feeling slightly fidgety. I could not figure out why. “Perhaps, I’m feeling nervous about classes,” I thought to myself. After all, this is my final year of graduate school, and this is the year to really buckle down and officially get my life together. And yes, that certainly played a role in the fidgety feeling, but oddly enough, only a background role. It suddenly became clear that I’ve been in Boston for nearly one year. This year flew by.

Even though I have lived most of my life here in Mississippi, it’s been a long time since I resided in a rural part of our state. In fact, it’s been almost 40 years since I was a true Mississippi country girl.

I don’t know about you, but I am not as old as the calendar suggest. At least that is what I tell myself. My joints often suggest otherwise, especially after what used to be easy activities, like all those things that I didn’t worry about in my younger years. Our age is just a number after all. It is what we do with our time, at whatever age we may be, that is important. 

Last year we bought a boat that weighs about two tons, and I needed a pickup truck to haul it. My son-in-law’s dad had one sitting in a barn up around Forest that had not been started in over three years and was there for the taking. My daughter had warned me that it’s no beauty, not as far as trucks go these days. But bless her female heart, she was only judging it by the way it looks which, as any guy in good standing can tell you, has little to do with pickups. The way it sounds? Sure. But how it looks? Way down the list.     

Summer is rapidly coming to an end for students across the state of Mississippi. Surprisingly, many of our public and private schools are starting the last week of July.

There are certain sounds that define a Mississippi summer.

The hum of cicadas on a hot afternoon. The squeak of the back door opening and closing a hundred times a day. A basketball bouncing in the driveway. The mixer running because someone decided it was the perfect day to make brownies. The laughter coming from a backyard adventure—or the inevitable, “Mama, come look at this frog!”

As a child, summers in Mississippi always included trips to some of our state parks. Those trips included hiking, swimming, boating, fishing, and lots of outdoor picnics. But my favorite memories of Mississippi state parks in the summertime involved short little getaway trips and staying in one of the park cabins with cousins and friends.

When you’re a child, you assume the world you know is the world everyone knows. Growing up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I never stopped to consider how lucky I was to have the barrier islands sitting just beyond the horizon. 

It is often said that we can learn a great deal from nature, and that is true. But sometimes, the lessons we learn surprise us more than we care to admit. 

Now, I’m not Willie Morris, and my dog is not named Skip. But this week, we had an unusual Mississippi dog story unfold on the Lucius homestead.

I come from a huge family of teachers. But I admit that I was a little shocked when our youngest son, Chris Lucius, decided to become a coach and a teacher.

There is a good chance that somewhere in Mississippi right now, a child is learning multiplication at a kitchen table while a parent reheats coffee for the third time that morning.