Dear Savannah
How is it possible that I can love you and not so much have seen your face? Oh I have read about you in countless books. I have searched you out on the internet and I have devoured the pages of Savannah Magazine but I have yet to actually meet you face to face. I can’t even remember when this love affair began. Sadly i was oblivious to your beauty growing up in North Florida. I was so blinded by bright lights of big cities that I couldn’t see the gems in my own back yard. It is only with age and experience that one can come to appreciate a kinder, gentler way of life. So here I sit in Southern California trying to find a way back to the South I love. I wonder if you will be all I have made you out to be? Am I just creating a fantasy in my head? I have planned trips to visit you year after year and yet none of them have come to pass. The first was at a crossroads in my life when I just wanted to run away for a weekend. I wanted to sit on a front porch and sip mint juleps as I waved to passersby. I ended up in Atlanta. Almost as far from Savannah as my home in California is. The next year I found myself in Athens for a wedding. How could I have come all the way from California to Georgia and not have jumped in the car for a rendezvous? I ask myself that very same question time and time again. i still can’t come up with a suitable answer. The next year it was a trip to Charleston for a wedding. Sadly weekend weddings do not leave much free time for road trips. The following year it was research for a wedding, my own. I was discussing marriage with a man from California and neither one of us wanted to get married here. Well Savannah was the next logical choice as far as I was concerned. I could just see us saying our vows amidst the fountains of Forsyth Park. I had it all planned out in my head and my heart. He didn’t agree and I didn’t agree to marry him. Some things speak volumes about a man and a woman. The next year was another trip to Charleston. This time for a Labor Day family get together. It was a lovely September day that I sat in my mother’s jeep and wrestled with myself about the 83 miles to my beloved. “It’s a small and windy road” my mother said. “It will take you couple hours each way” she said. “Don’t you want to stay and hang with us at the beach” she said. Ugh why do Southern girls always listen to their mothers even when they don’t want to? Again my road trip was thwarted and so my love affair has continued only in my head. I dream daily of sweet tea and Southern Gentlemen as I sit in rush hour traffic in Southern California. Oh how I can’t wait to one day strolling the tree lined streets and squares of the city i so look forward to meeting one day. Until then I will wait patiently for my copy of Savannah Magazine in the mail each month and I will no doubt continue to peruse the real estate offerings online.
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