SEAN OF THE SOUTH
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROJAN MAHARJAN ON UNSPLASH
Alabama or Bust BY SEAN DIETRICH So, I guess we’re moving. My wife, Jamie, has been looking at houses for several months now, ever since her mother passed away. And it’s getting serious. This all started one morning when my wife announced that she wanted to leave Florida and move to Birmingham, Alabama, to make a fresh start in life. My immediate reaction was to kiss her forehead. I told her I was going to miss her dearly. “You’re coming with me,” she said. “Me?” I said with a laugh. “Leave Florida?” Truthfully, I did not think she would follow through. I never thought I’d leave the Alligator State. I’ve never had the desire to leave. During boyhood, when all my friends traipsed off to college to begin their lives far away from home, I was voted most likely to die of mosquito-borne illness. I grew up in a magical place where 127 square miles of brackish bay water meet the sky. The Choctawhatchee Bay was never less than a mile from my front porch; neither was the Gulf of Mexico. And living within my backyard, according to the Guinness World Records Book, was the world’s largest brown recluse spider. We named him Phil. But my wife is not someone who makes idle 16 Bham Family March 2022
statements. When she declares that she’s going to do something, it’s already half-done. So, if this woman says we’re moving, it’s time to call Mayflower®. Lately, this woman has been constantly obsessing over houses for sale, daydreaming about them, drawing pictures of three-bedroom, two-baths on legal pads, using pocketknives to carve the initials of her favorite Realtors into our kitchen table. She frequently uses my computer printer to print explicit photographs of Arts and Crafts-style bungalows, then hangs these photos up in our bathroom like pinups. My wife frequently drives thousands of miles to attend open houses, wherein she walks thoughtfully through the homes of complete strangers for the sole purpose of criticizing their decor. And once, late at night, I caught my wife watching HGTV at a low volume. “Oh yeah, baby,” my wife was saying suggestively as the television displayed gratuitous shots of subway tile. My wife is a big fan of subway tile. She would happily move into the Bates Motel if they had subway tile backsplashes. So, over the last months, my wife’s home-buying fantasies have gotten worse. Recently, she has been CONTINUED ON PAGE 11
