Gone

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As a writer, I still enjoy advantages gained by growing up in rural areas where isolation and boredom were relentless motivators and keys to the limitless worlds that lie between covers, not coasts. Better yet, my isolation was split between bipolar geographies: farms in the Midwest and my maternal home of Richmond County, N.C., a solid place of cotton mills, tobacco, cotton and truck farming (of the vegetable variety), and some of the finest people I’ve known. The fact that many of these fine people were also my aunts, uncles, and cousins only added to the richness of a Midwestern and Deep South childhood that practically guaranteed that, even if I had failed as a writer, I was bound to succeed at something. My Mother, Georgia Wilson White, would not have tolerated anything less, nor would my sweet-natured aunts and charming, tough uncles, most of whom quit school to work in the mills or the field (which only accelerated their love of learning). And my Grandmother Rilla Nay Wilson? The woman did not brook fools, nor the lazy-witted, and she carried a pistol for a reason.

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