It’s the Little Things
In less than two weeks, I will close out this Mississippi chapter of my life and be onto Chapter 10—back to California and then who knows where. As I reflect on my time here, I’ve been making lists of things I’ll miss and things I won’t. So far, this is what I’ve got, in no particular order:
Things I’ll miss:
Recipes involving Fritos
Knowing my neighbors and having good relationships with them
People doing nice things and expecting nothing in return
Community spirit
Homemade biscuits and cornbread
No traffic; every place being 15 minutes away
Local, non-corporate pharmacy
Fireplace in my bedroom
Littlejohn’s
Wise Women
My favorite restaurants (thank you: City Grocery, Grit, Miscellanea, Snackbar, Jinsei, St Leo, Volta, and Good Day Cafe)
Running into people I know
The Square
Dogwoods and irises
Hearing different kinds of birds when I wake up in the morning
Woods around my house
Ease of doing business with people
Owning a home and having a big yard
Daily hikes with my dogs
Going to the club for swimming and steak
Polite and respectful kids
Sounds of crickets and frogs at night
The way light shows up on ripples of a lake
Seeing kids doing wholesome activities
Yoknapatawpha Arts Council
Smell of honeysuckle
My neighbor calling his dog in at night and saying “Atta girl” when he plays fetch with her
Things I won’t miss:
Microaggressions
Slow reaction times
Fried food
Worst allergies EVER
Heat/humidity; freezing winters
Pickup trucks and muscle cars
Khakis, polos, and baseball caps
Red/white/blue clothing
Confederate soldier statue on the Square
Lack of platonic male/female friendships
MAGA
Fundamentalist Christianity; the hypocrisy
The homogeneity; lack of diversity
Maxi-dresses with sneakers
Social divisions
Restaurants without non-dairy creamer
Businesses that don’t operate on Sunday
Cheese or sugar in every recipe
Mosquitoes and ticks
The passivity (see prior blog, 4/17/26)
People voting red
Lack of education
Highly gendered roles
Obsession with football
Lack of dating options
Frank hunting and eating animals (see prior blog, 4/21/26)
Grocery stores that don’t sell liquor
Like I tell my patients, there is no such thing as all good or all bad—it’s always a mixture of both, and you have to find the mix that works for you. Recently, a friend and I were talking about what unconditional love means and she said, “Isn’t there always an X?”—meaning, isn’t there always something negative in the midst of a sea of positive? I had never thought about it that way, but I guess she’s right.
With that in mind…Oxford, my love for you is unconditional. But as divorcing couples often say, “I love them, but I’m just not IN love anymore.”
Photo credit: Susan Mah