I.
It’s been sixteen years since my last Decoration Day. The last time I was there, I was happy with my job, happy with my government, happy with most of my family. The 3G was still all the iPhone I needed, and with Steve Jobs in control, things tended to ship when they were ready rather than because it was the third Friday in September. We were finally starting to get on top of the mortgage, we were headed back to Europe for the first time in three years, and Facebook had put me into a rolling high school reunion that was fishing some of the past out of the black hole for the first time, polishing it off, and making it worth more than I thought.
Things have changed. The world has gone backward at jig speed. Stupid has taken over the nation, and Alabama has very nearly the worst case of it. And the completely unrelated matter that cause my mother to tear the family apart would break open that autumn and make it emotionally impossible for me to go back. It was a problem I didn’t have the power to solve, which meant I wanted no part of it. Still don’t, honestly, but it turns out that when you stay away for that long, and don’t spend more than a few hours, there’s no time for anything but being polite and pleasant. It was good to see my aunts, uncles and godparents, however briefly, and it was a necessary connection. If something were to happen tomorrow, I went back. I made the gesture.
It wasn’t awful, all in all. It’s not like the place was swimming in MAGA gear on everybody and yard signs and bumper stickers. The presence of $4 gas probably counted for a lot of that, if I had to guess, but it’s also hard not to feel like they don’t feel the need to advertise their allegiance for the same reason humans don’t advertise that they need to breathe air. The state legislature took the opportunity to gerrymander away every Black Congressman within hours of the Supreme Court paving the way. A couple days later, a state legislator was openly hoping the Supreme Court would somehow throw out the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. And naturally, the church service was thirty minutes of praise choruses on a Humbletron followed by a sermon on the rich man and Lazarus whose point was that Hell is real, with nary a syllable spared on what got the rich man to Hell in the first place. So despite appearances, nothing has really changed in the Heart of Dixie.
II.
The hometown has changed.
About half of it has been bought by a dubious cult church with strong January 6 links, and it feels like a lot of people are not happy about that. The streets are empty, as are half the storefronts, and it doesn’t exactly suggest growth is on the way. But there’s a handful of things I never expected. There’s a new development close to mine, with newer and nicer houses and a clubhouse with a pool and things…and everyone I saw walking and talking and playing ball there was Black. There’s a sports bar and pub in the old natural gas building. There’s a coffee roaster and cafe in the old TV repair shop, and it’s damn good coffee, and they have mental health resources listed on the same wall as the prayer request board. Hell, you go down the road to the last exit, and there’s Taco Bell and Hardee’s and Sonic and McDonald’s, none of which existed in my era. And close to the Sonic, there’s a cigar lounge, with leather chairs and brown liquor by the drink.
Birmingham, of course, is Birmingham. Dining Room of the South, the best craft beer variety in America, baseball history, Special Dogs, and full of people who know what it means to fight. Because they did. And their parents. And their grandparents. Black Birmingham is better prepared for the world in 2026 than almost anyplace in America that hasn’t already been made a battlefield, and whatever I can do to help, I’ll do. We could all be taking lessons, given what it’s going to take.
Every chance I get, I’m promoting Birmingham. I’m proud of what it has become, to the point where I feel awkward about stealing valor from the people who stayed, and fought, and spend the last 30 years making it the kind of place I would move to in a heartbeat if it were only located on the San Mateo coast or something. They put the work in, and I didn’t, and all I can do is promote what they did. But I also had a conversation with three guys who stayed, and in the course of talking about City Stages, and the Birmingham Grasshoppers, and the old spots of Five Points South, they helped me see that doing my time helped fertilize the ground for the people who did the work that followed me, and it made me feel a little better. There is value in remembering when, remembering the Before Times, knowing how far we’ve come and the value of preserving what has been built and not taking it for granted. Which is a lesson we could really have stood to internalize as a nation. In any event, it’s a city I would not hesitate to go back to for another visit.
III.
This was the last visit.
For the better part of twenty years, my mother has been pestering me to come home and go through stuff. I thought I had, honestly, but this was the last call. Everything I had in the old house I grew up in has been touched, evaluated, and separated into tranches of “I am taking this now/I need this shipped to me/I need this kept for the nephews and niece to have first crack at it/this can be donated somewhere or just thrown out”. This was last call. Everything I still want to keep from the house is in my old room, on or next to the bed, and could probably all fit into an overstuffed SUV.
The house is only superficially the same. Some trees are gone, some have grown beyond measure, the garden and the swingset and the dog lot and the grapevines and the cane patch and the chestnut tree are gone, as are the magnolia and the two basketball goals. The driveway sits empty by default, and there’s a house on what used to be the empty lot across the street that served as the closest thing to a park for touch football or riding BMX bikes or what have you. And inside the house, almost all the furniture and furnishings of consequence are down in Baldwin County, and the visual contextual clues that made it my old house are few and far between. To the point that when my mother talks about selling it, and selling her house down south, and moving into an assisted living community, it sounds like a grand idea rather than the loss of my childhood home.
Home is a loaded word. Home is safe. Home is where they have to take you in. Home is a place where you don’t need a bubble, or a blue dot, or the ability to pass. Home is belonging. I know I said that no place felt like home on day one like Nashville did in 1994, and that was true, but Nashville in 2026 is different even if you were a freshly-minted University Graduate Fellow. Arlington and DC felt like home, because that was where I was rebuilt, but that job isn’t there any more and the people are scattered to the winds. This place now? This feels like home, when I’m pulling the garbage cans out to the driveway on a Saturday morning or walking the dog under the blanket of marine layer, walking into church on Sunday, having a pint down the street or in downtown. But Silly Con Valley doesn’t feel like home the way Northern California does. And I am too close to the Hellmouth of everything that drives us toward the Apocalypse at ever more acute angles to feel safety or belonging or comfort in Silly Con Valley.
Home is a state of mind. And that’s why Jason Isbell’s lyrics resonates with me. “Somebody take me home, through those Alabama pines.” Through. Home isn’t in those Alabama pines, never really was, but the way there runs through them and it took me a long time to accept that. You don’t have to remain, but you have to go through. Maybe this is me finally coming out the other side.