photograph by anna traverse fogle
If you want Memphians to agree with you, I recommend talking about the ways this community isn’t working as well as it could. In my past two columns in this space, I’ve reflected on our city’s problems, and more readers have reached out than usually do. Some of those readers have wanted to have solutions-oriented conversations, focusing on how those of us who choose to live here can work together to continue fostering the community we desire. But some others, inevitably, prefer to offer a fist-bump in solidarity with what they hear as appropriate negativity. ‘Finally, she’s come to her senses!’, I imagine this latter group concluding.
Sorry, folks, but I have not come to my senses, at least not in the way that you mean. Yes, I too fret about crime rates in Memphis, and yes, I want our local government to function more smoothly. Yes, I want there to be more stable, well-paying jobs here, motivating young people to stay and invest in Memphis. Yes, I would greatly prefer to assume that I can drive through an intersection when the light turns green, rather than pausing to make sure no one’s planning to test their stunt-driving skills today. That would be nice.
All the same, I consider myself a Memphian by choice. I was raised here from the age of 18 months, which wasn’t up to me. I never intended to live here as an adult, so I left for college and didn’t look back — at least for a while. Moving home at 25 was a matter of necessity, not choice. But that was 13 years ago. At some point along the way, whether or not each of us arrived here by choice, staying becomes a choice we make over and over again. With each rent or mortgage check written, tag renewed, ballot cast, and damn given, we reinvest in the place we call home. (Good luck with that tag, though.)
Plenty of Memphians will nod in agreement if you gripe about this city. Griping is easy; I can confirm this from having griped my share of gripes. But plenty of us, too, wake up each morning and continue to invest their time, their talents, and their hope here.
You’re probably reading this in November, the month many celebrate Thanksgiving. We’re entering a season of shorter days and longer nights, of greater time for reflection and greater need for togetherness. In this season, we’re reminded that gratitude is more a decision and a practice than some spontaneously occurring condition.
Nothing is simple. The Thanksgiving holiday’s origins seem more obviously complicated now, in 2022, than perhaps we realized as schoolkids. Sharing one harvest festival with Native Americans sounds nice, and makes for a good story, but surely doesn’t erase the brutality that white settlers visited upon the people indigenous to the lands we now call America.
‘So, Anna,’ you might ask, ‘do you celebrate Thanksgiving?’ Sure do. I would probably even say, if asked to rank such things, that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year: It’s peaceful and humble, requiring no more shopping than what can be done at the grocery, and asks us to focus on the simple gifts of togetherness and earthly sustenance. Nothing is simple, but we have choices to make about how we deal with the complications.
I suspect that most of us don’t want to cancel Thanksgiving any more than we want to walk away from Memphis. That it’s complicated doesn’t stop people as stubborn as Memphians from proudly celebrating our city.
Plenty of Memphians will nod in agreement if you gripe about this city. Griping is easy; I can confirm this from having griped my share of gripes. But plenty of us, too, wake up each morning and continue to invest their time, their talents, and their hope here. That’s no accident. Not everyone has the means to leave. If you do have that option, though, and you choose to stay anyway, then you can’t convince me you don’t feel at least a little thankful to be right where we are.
This fall, as the sky darkens earlier and earlier and the light falls more gently, as woodsmoke curls into crisp silvery air, as the ginkgo across the street shifts from grass-green to lemon-yellow, I’m grateful — by choice — to be exactly where I’ve found myself.
