Southern Bella

I've just come to a realization.

I'm a Southern Belle.

Shocker for me to say this: skinny little pale Connecticut Yankee(ess) that I am, but here I was, yesterday, at the Memorial Day Parade, seeing all those Connectians (is that 'people from Connecticut'?) from East Haven High School, all pale (and now, all lobster-colored, like me ... remind me never to wear a tank with spaghetti straps again) march by, looking exactly like me.

Except none of them would recognize me now, because I've turned into a Southern Belle. I hear the word 'ma'am' and don't rip off the sayer's face, I'm polite, and ...

And, at the parade there were at least three different bands of soldier-reenactors honoring the Confederated States and the men and women who fought and died in The War Against the Northern Aggressors (some carpetbaggers call it the 'Civil War' but there was nothing 'civil' about it).

And that's when it hit me: I'm in the South. I'm a citizen of the Old Dominion, the State that was home to the capital of the Confederation.

I'm a ... gasp! ... Southerner! Heck, I was even carrying an umbrella ... no, that's not right: I was carrying a parasol, because I'm a sweet little Southern Belle, trying (unsuccessfully) to keep those oppressive rays of the sun off my dainty Southern skin.

Well, okay, maybe I'm not a Southern Belle, per se, but I do see, in myself, how a place becomes part of you, as you become a part of the place.

So I have another insight into myself as to why it's so easy for me to see Rosalie as she is: for, at base, she is a New Yorker, and I breathe being a person from that area of the country. I breathe it; it's in my bones.

Question for you: Bella grew up in Arizona. What is that like: being in Arizona, and Arizona being in you, and then moving to the wettest place in the U.S.A.? What is that like? That dislocation? That rootlessness, coming from that clear, brown heat to this oppressive wetness?

And the people, so, so different. Looking so like you on the outside, all so pale to be almost yellow in complexion, but so different on the inside, being Washingtonians, not Arizonans.

What's that like?

And I see now why I can so identify with Bella, of all people, too: for this Connecticut Yankee is not in King Arthur's court, but she may as well be, being in a world where people speak the same language, but speak it so differently, and have a way of relating to each other so, so differently, so, so less directly (or antagonistically, as they would say) than they did up North.

So, now I see that I just don't relate to Bella. No: I am Bella.

After all, I did find out yesterday that I am a Southern Bella.

kisses, 'phfina