Personal Narrative Research Paper

First, I was born. I do not remember the event firsthand, but several persons who I hold in high regard assure me that it did in fact happen, at approximately ten o’clock on the morning of August twenty-eighth, Year of Our Lord 1998. Shortly thereafter, my parents made the drive from the hospital in Montgomery, Alabama back to the small, white country church where my dad worked as preacher. It may be more correct to say that we drove back to the church parsonage, but this parsonage was only a double wide trailer in a clear-cut behind the church, so it will suffice to say that we returned to the church. Though I actually only lived next to that church for a little over a year, it has come to define my conception of my hometown. Geographically, …show more content…
When I was born, he had lived there his whole life except for a few years away during college. However, not long after my first birthday, he began to itch for something grander. Inspired by romantic visions of the great West, my dad applied for a preaching job in eastern Wyoming. We moved there in the fall, with just enough time before winter for my dad to realize his mistake. With its heavy snows and constant winds, Casper could not be more different from Monroeville. My mom was pregnant, and my dad realized he did not want the family’s second child to be born on the high plains so far from home. As soon as the snow melted, my dad resigned from his job and my parents headed out for parts unknown, eventually arriving back in …show more content…
My dad got a job preaching at a small white church in town, so we brought him home to the parsonage by that church. Red dirt roads, porch swings, and pecan trees filled my life again. It was the first time I had ever come home to Monroeville. Since that first homecoming my living circumstances have changed several times. When I was six we moved to Oklahoma, then to Arkansas when I was fifteen. I have spent three-quarters of my life away from Monroeville Alabama, but I have also spent three-quarters of my life returning there. Even now I am preparing to make another pilgrimage back this Christmas. I am beginning to feel once more the insistent pull, the roots of my life calling me back. What is perhaps most curious is that it is the town itself that pulls me. I will see my family there, and I look forward to that too, but somehow it is the town itself, those magnolia trees and porch swings, that I am waiting for. I don't think I would even like to live there. Nevertheless, the pull to return remains. This town holds my roots. My grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles and cousins a hundred years removed were born and lived and died there. It is hard to find a single graveyard in the county were my ancestors are not represented. My great-grandparents returned there from the World Wars, and their grandparents before them returned there from the Civil War. So it is that every year, in the footsteps of my ancestors, I also return home