The Stars Fell

on me in Alabama. I lived my little drama, and stars fell on Alabama that night. I saw those stars tumbling down over vast areas of open space, littering the sky above the lights from the theatre.  I watched them on my way back from the ocean, full from ice cream, and peanuts, and adventure.  I kept track of them as I drove to Birmingham late one night listening to the same country music over and over again.  They led me to Seale, AL after a luminous article in the NYT instructed me to go to there.  They were scattered about the porch where Zelda and Scott might have held hands years ago.  I wanted to be the Camellia in the heart of Dixie, I really did.  And in some parallel universe I might be or might have been.  There is no way to better respond to flattery from a gentleman than with a southern lilt.  I have never been complemented so many times in a grocery store as I was in Publix--without fail, every time I went.  I have never eaten so many delicious things, or even wanted to eat so many delicious things (impossible!, you may think, but no, no).  I have never been so homesick.
     I have thought about the women in my life who are from the South, thought about what attracts me to them, and how their Southerness is a part of that attraction--and thought that really, to be from the South is not something I can fully try on.  I can wear my predilection for it as a scarf, a handbag, a pair of high heels: just not the entire ensemble.  I'm sorry that's the case--it's not like me to be a wanna-be (or when I want to be, I become).  I will always have Catherine Simms, and my Southern sub-genre of chick lit (Waltzing at the Piggly Wiggly anyone?) but I give in--I'm not a Southern belle.  A Camellia I am not.  A New York Rose, that's me, thorns and all.