Return to Hometown

(Photo: S.K., below mentioned popular, effective community leader.)

74 days until we move.

The new house is under contract. Closing date is August 11th. The property is in Leesville, LA, 2.5 hours from Lafayette, where we are now and where we've been for the past 13 years.

Leesville is, in fact, our hometown, where Mack and I grew up. We met and fell in love there 25 years ago, when we were both 14. Our families are still there, so returning to our old stomping grounds isn't so much an adventure of discovering a new place as it is rediscovering what the old place and people have become. For Mack and I, it's coming back home after a long, eventful sojourn.

For the kids, though, it's ripping their roots from their native Lafayette soil and plunging them into a strange, uncomfortable flowerbed that promises a not-quite-flourishing future.

Leesville is small and relatively nondescript. There are two major grocery stores, a 6-screen theater, a bowling alley, and a million churches. It's a busy little city that's not unhealthy, but stepping into it after leaving Lafayette's vibrant light, I fear Leesville might slowly suffocate one who pines too deeply for what she's known rather than embracing what's before her.

What Leesville does have is our families: our matriarchs, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, god parents, nieces and nephews. All the folks who remember us when we were "yea-high." Our teachers and coaches, the same bank teller whose hair hasn't changed since the early 80s, the very same folks who have run the skating rink since before Mack or I could tie our own shoes -- all still there.

Leesville may cast the same shadow it did the day we left 25 years ago, but at heart, it isn't the same town. Before, folks wouldn't breathe the word "gay," lest speaking the word aloud might make them "turn gay," if they weren't "gay all along." But now an openly gay man is one of the most popular and effective community leaders the town has ever seen, and he's married to an equally popular and effective community leader. Leesville loves, accepts, and celebrates them. (Granted, Leesville, like so many other Southern towns, has a long way to go before it establishes itself as genuinely all-accepting, but it's a start.)

Local business was, is, and always will form the full figure of Leesville, but someone who sits where it counts has begun to allow bigger business the opportunity to enhance the economy. Surprisingly, it seems no one has stepped up to vehemently oppose progression, which -- to some folks way back when -- was far worse than being gay.

Where and when does this put our little family? We are dropping into the roiling tides of municipal and social transition. We carry in our hands worn, outdated suitcases full of memories of the old Leesville and it's antiquated spirit. We are unprepared to court this place now that she's all grown up.