Musings-November 2009

Musings . . .

Wasn’t it just April a bit ago? Oh, and then a couple of months later there was the summer jaunt to the Florida beaches. Yes, and then school started and football—but how can November already be here?! This month’s ready-or-not-here-I-am insistence has caught us off guard. However, always on board for good causes, good times, and good news, we are ready to rally ‘round November’s numerous noteworthy events and holidays—our voting responsibilities on Election Day; our measureless gratitude to fallen, former, and still-fighting American soldiers on Veterans Day; and our celebration of the blessings in our lives on Thanksgiving.

While on the subject of blessings, what inestimable blessings befall us, both as family and community, when our children-turned-professionals choose to come back to their hometowns to establish residence and share with us their lives and their talents. With economic opportunities attracting and awaiting them elsewhere, what is it that brings these young professionals with their burgeoning families back home? Certainly a job market that provides lucrative positions for the levels of shills and degrees they’ve acquired.

Beyond this, though, lies the utopia of having immediate and extended family next door, down the street, across town, or a ten-minute drive away to enfold, nurture, and provide a support system as it instills family values and family traditions. For these returning young couples and their children, how rich will be their growing-up and growing-old years, enjoying first-hand and hands-on their grandparents, great aunts and uncles, aunts and uncles, and cousins galore—not to mention the sisterhood and brotherhood of their moms’ and dads’ friends, deemed “real characters” from grade school. These shared times will not be semi- or quadri-annual catch-up sessions, but instead the literal multi-weekly times of their lives that frame the most phenomenal memories and foster the dearest affections.

In one of our feature articles this month, we spotlight a sampling of these families in Vicksburg, Mississippi, who, with all respect to Thomas Wolfe, have come home again and are thriving in the welcoming arms of their families, friends, and hometowns. Many of our communities are experiencing a similar return of their young professionals, a trend we hope continues on the rise—and surely to be counted a blessing this Thanksgiving--in our lives along and beyond the Mississippi.