Dogwood Chapter 7

Our Mountain

The street I grew up on dead-ends in a sixty foot white cross on a mountaintop. And The Cross has a base made of giant limestone bricks. If I’m being honest, it feels more earnest than the other trashy crosses that leer at you from highway’s edge. Growing up, I always thought of the highway as a cruel slash running right through our mountain like a scar. Our cross is visible for miles from the valley below.

I’m using the words “our cross” like you’d say “our street.” I am by no means claiming ownership of it and even though it is a monument to local WWI veterans, from the valley below, it looms ominous to anyone who (*checks notes*) might have historically been oppressed by “White Christianity.” I didn’t really think about it too hard, growing up there. It’s just The Cross at the end of our street, X marks the spot.

The front porch of our house has the best swing. It’s made out of wood slats and if I’m being perfectly honest it’s really just a basic suspended wood bench. But I swear there’s something about the slope of the back and the height of the arms that make it perfect to spend all day on. With or without company.

I think simple is an undervalued word if something just works and my parents’ simple wood porch swing has outlasted the chain links that first held it up. Again, it’s really nothing special, just a straight forward mass-produced wood swing. Yet somehow it holds you softly even when lying on your side. Not a flimsy internet monstrosity with thin cushions that need to be arranged just-so or else it’s sad, ugly, and uncomfortable. What a trinity lol.

But from my parents’ simple wooden porch swing, you have view of the whole yard wrapping the house and street out front. It’s a great place to be. Plenty of notice if anyone is stopping by. And now, remember, I grew up in a boarding house and we could walk to church on Sunday. Someone was ALWAYS stopping by at my parents’ house.

There’s been a lantern at the front of our yard for almost thirty years. The glass is long gone, and it held a luxuriously rolling mountain of candle wax inside. A mountain built from a lifetime of welcoming.

The lantern is right beside one of the biggest trees in the yard. The kind of tree so big the roots cracked the sidewalk there at the fence line. That fractured concrete walkway, like tectonic plates at war, make you grateful for the warm glow of the lantern, right there at the fence for you. Next to the lantern and our giant tree is a small and watchful dogwood. It’s a very simple welcome party.

And now, of course, welcome to my parents’ house. I could say my mom’s house because although it’s technically their house, she is The Believer. The love it in the “Love it or List it.” But it’s hard work running a boarding house built 150 years ago and I’ve historically been firmly on the “dear lord abandon this mission” side of things.

But I don’t feel that way anymore and it’s honestly shocking how much more I have grown to love my home.

I think I just needed to do enough growing up outside of it first. But I can always find it again. There on our mountain. X marks the spot.