Stay 731: Embraced
"How many miles away is Sonic?"
I stared, dumbfounded, as they told me the nearest Sonic was ten miles out of town. Kevin patted my leg reassuringly. "Well, you'll learn to enjoy the drive."
We were newlyweds and newly graduated, interviewing for a Residence Life Director position for Kevin in Middle-of-Nowhere-Close-to-Sonic, Kentucky.
They chose another candidate, and our lives forever shifted, allowing us to keep the roots we had been cultivating in Jackson during our stay here as college students. Jackson is the town where we met, dated, fell in love, and got married. It's the town where we lived in a less than ideal apartment together while we saved money for our house. And that house is where we've welcomed neighbors, friends, and foster children.
It's the town where there are not one but six Sonics within eight miles of my house. What more could a person want from a town?
“It’s here that God opened my eyes to an incredible pain in our city. . . . My heart changed.”
Kevin and I have chosen Jackson to be the launching location of some of our craziest dreams and passions. It's here that I kept a steady job as he launched his business, and for the past three years, it's been a blast to watch the community fully embrace our company and trust us.
It's the town where we've volunteered with our church's youth group for a decade. We've had a front row seat to all that has entailed. We've had a mom from East Jackson ask us to take guardianship of her teenage son who had joined the church. She couldn't keep up with the demands of holding a minimum wage job and a child who was struggling to find his place in the world.
Our house is where a middle school boy from Lincoln Courts asked me how I got my microwave to stick on the wall. (It's mounted above the stove.) It’s where he asked for a spoon, and I pointed to the drawer; he stared, mesmerized by the matching silverware. It’s where his friend pointed to the front bedroom and asked me if he could live with us; he had already picked out which room he wanted.
It’s here that God opened my eyes to an incredible pain in our city—the pain of children making beds out of dirty clothes and taking advantage of every meal because they didn't know when the next would come from. My heart changed.
As a result, I slightly altered my job trajectory so that we could more fully invest in our next "crazy" passion: surrendering the material blessings and emotional capacity God has given us to become foster parents. The process starts with long and boring classes; culminates with a ridiculous number of people traipsing through your house, nit-picking your safety features; and ends with a stranger showing up with a kid, having you sign a piece of paper, and then leaving. And there you are. With a child.
I still remember that November day in 2016. We sat across the kitchen table from a beautiful, blue-eyed, six-year-old girl, her small laundry basket of mismatched clothes on the floor.
She smiled all evening as we painted pictures at the table together. She cried for her siblings as we put her to bed.
And I wept. A lot. I cried for the pain that this six-year-old would now feel for her entire life because of her parents' poor decisions. I wept for the other children all over our community and state that were told by a stranger that they had to live somewhere else for an unknown amount of town.
In Tennessee, twenty-two children are taken into custody every day. That's twenty-two children who wake up every day, safe in a foster home but not knowing when or if they will see their mommies and daddies again. They don’t know where their siblings are. Oftentimes they didn't even get to say goodbye or grab their favorite stuffed animal.
“I don’t think we could have embarked on the journey of starting a business or accepting a foster placement without this town that we have grown to love so deeply.”
The first week of being "parents," I did everything I could to keep everyone happy. Even though we had only seventy-two hours to complete a long list of DCS required actions, including a full health checkup, enrolling in school, and purchasing clothes and school supplies, I still showed up to work every day. Kevin and I made dinners, explained how to wash hair, found a bedtime routine, and, at the end of every day, I cried myself to sleep to text messages from church members praying for us.
When Kevin and I first got married and were looking for a community to call our own, a quick and easy access to Sonic was one way I judged a town. Oh how badly I undervalued the strength of a true community. One, like Jackson, that rallies behind its residents as they become entrepreneurs. One that shows up with toys when they find out that a six-year old has been brought into the family.
Here in our town of six Sonics, I found my support system for what turned out to be the most difficult twelve months that I've ever lived. Community members who heard about our new addition showed up with Barbies, pillow pets, and coloring books. Neighbors I had hardly spoken to brought school workbooks. A coworker gave us a bike.
I don't think we could have embarked on the journey of starting a business or accepting a foster placement without this town that we have grown to love so deeply. This town has supported us through heartbreak and triumph, through our most difficult decisions and the zaniest of days. It's a town full of heart, compassion, and a deep desire to unify and work toward a better future, and we're beyond grateful to be a part of it.
After graduating from Union University, Renae Adelsberger and her husband Kevin decided to make Jackson their home due to their love for their church, nonprofits, local businesses, and abundance of Sonic drive-ins. Read more of her work on her personal blog.
It was late, and the ferry felt cool in the summer’s evening breeze. We were only a week into my summer in Istanbul, but in our short time learning basic Turkish, navigating public transit, and hopping between Asia and Europe the way I do now between Highland and the Bypass, we felt like naturals. The warm glow of the nearest café’s neon sign welcomed us to the European shore where the five of us girls were staying for the week, and we didn’t need much convincing to stop in for a late-night dinner of pasta and whatever scrumptious-looking mystery pastry the shelf held.
I had a college professor tell me once, “Remember, you are changing your generation and the generations of the people around you.” Those words are so true and are still relevant in my life today. In fact, that professor was living proof of that statement by changing my life with mentoring, advising, and pushing me to be better. It was not just that one professor, of course. There were (and still are) many people who continually wanted to invest in me as I grew up here. My father and mother met at Lambuth University, but my dad was not in school there.
“Where are you from?” The dreaded question. Whenever someone asks me this, I laugh and try to assess whether the person asking wants the long answer or the short one. Even the long version has been condensed for convenience over the years. This question has had different answers at different points in my life. When I was ten, I was from Northern Kentucky. When I was eleven and my family had moved to South Africa as missionaries, I was from America.
Eight days late and after thirty-six hours of labor from my hard-working mother, I was born at the Jackson-Madison County General Hospital on a hot April day in 1976. Forty-two years later, I am an attending physician in that very same department. It’s very unusual for a physician to practice in their hometown, but I am thankful that my journey has brought me back to where I started. My earliest memory of life in Jackson is from First Presbyterian Playschool.
Eight days late and after thirty-six hours of labor from my hard-working mother, I was born at the Jackson-Madison County General Hospital on a hot April day in 1976. Forty-two years later, I am an attending physician in that very same department. It’s very unusual for a physician to practice in their hometown, but I am thankful that my journey has brought me back to where I started. My earliest memory of life in Jackson is from First Presbyterian Playschool.
2002 was the year that changed my life. I had just moved to “the big city” of Jackson from the incredibly small town of Trezevant, Tennessee. My new journey started at Union University as a Christian Studies major, and quickly I realized I had turned religion into a textbook, not an action. It took a while to recover from the shock of not knowing what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, as this was my plan for quite some time—going into ministry. I continued pressing on with my major until 201 Ash Street happened.
Never ever in a million years would I have guessed that I would be a small business owner living in Jackson, Tennessee. I am one of the most shy people you will ever meet. That ambitious entrepreneur spirit is in me, but growing up, it wasn’t readily apparent, even to me. My husband, on the other hand, always knew he would work for himself and probably stay here in Jackson. Both of our grandparents owned their own businesses, and their examples shaped our lives. When I think of Jackson, I think of my family.
“Community is not something you have, like pizza,” wrote social critic James Howard Kunstler in The Geography of Nowhere. “Nor is it something you can buy. It’s a living organism based on a web of interdependencies—which is to say a local economy.” Americans, perhaps above all others, have bought into the lie in the last couple of generations that each person is an island, shaping her or his own destiny with nothing but a morning shot of caffeine and a solid WiFi connection.
If you had asked me about my future in the fall of 1994, I would have told you that I was planning on moving back home to Paducah, Kentucky, as soon as I finished college. I was supposed to live on Jefferson Street, right next door to my life-long BFF, Laura. She was going to live in her grandmother’s house, and I would buy the house next door. Twenty-four years later, she still reminds me of that broken promise. I had roots there in Paducah. They were strong and firmly planted. My daddy grew up there, too
If you told the twenty-year-old me that I would eventually live in Jackson, Tennessee, he would have died laughing. I wasn't even sure I would be living in Tennessee period. Twenty-year-old me was an M1-A1 Abrahms Tank System Specialist (tank mechanic, y'all, I was a tank mechanic) that had dreams of completing a twenty-year career and retiring. And then after my retirement, I would launch some sort of startup with the security of a nice, fat check to fall back on if things didn't work out. Twenty-year-old me was married to the first of two ex-wives and had no kids.
"How many miles away is Sonic?" I stared, dumbfounded, as they told me the nearest Sonic was ten miles out of town. Kevin patted my leg reassuringly. "Well, you'll learn to enjoy the drive." We were newlyweds and newly graduated, interviewing for a Residence Life Director position for Kevin in Middle-of-Nowhere-Close-to-Sonic, Kentucky. They chose another candidate, and our lives forever shifted, allowing us to keep the roots we had been cultivating in Jackson during our stay here as college students.
I came to Jackson sight-unseen in 2011 when I arrived for new student orientation at Union University. Removed from the South since 1999, I had developed a proper Midwestern wall around myself. People like to talk about Midwestern friendliness, but let me tell you, there is none of this "chat with strangers in the grocery store line" or "call everyone ‘hon’" there. As in architecture, walls may be breached with effort, but it's usually easier just to leave them alone.
Standing in the center of the walkway, I found myself staring anxiously at the building before me: the University of Memphis at Lambuth. It was my first day back to college since graduating from Jackson State Community College a little over a year before, and I reluctantly confessed to myself that I was a bit nervous. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the reason for this nervousness; I had been through the “first day of school” more times than I could count, yet I still felt the same anxiety as I had in previous years.
I have always felt some connection with Jackson, Tennessee—possibly because my grandfather was the first chiropractor in Jackson. (For those who might of known him, he was located off 45 down from the Red Cross building.) So in part you could say my roots are here in Jackson.I was born and raised in Lexington, Tennessee. Growing up, my mom, twin sister, and older brother would load up into a red station wagon and head out to Jackson, listening to Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie” cassette tapes.
There is a spot in this little city that beckons me come when I am in need—in need of assurance, in need of rest, in need of a change of scenery. I must admit, I did not find this spot on my own. I was dating a boy that understood my tendency for restlessness, and one night at dusk, he drove me to his secret respite in our small world. We sat at the edge of the parking lot of what is now a bustling commercial hub and watched the sun go down over our city. For the first time, I saw life here.
Growing up into my late teens or early twenties, I had so many people telling me what I needed to do and what I needed not to do. Looking back, it was very overwhelming to someone like me, a naturally meek and quiet person. I had so many opinions thrown at me, and it took me a few years to finally sit down and truly think about what I wanted in my life. I was told countless times by various people how I needed to move away, get out of this small town, and live somewhere bigger because there's so much "more."
It had been a long day of alphabet learning, number counting, napping, and recess. Dirt stains on the front of my Little Mermaid t-shirt were telltale signs of hide-and-seek in the giant front schoolyard. As I lay on my mat slowly stretching after a nap, my eyes wandered around the room, resting on the touch spot number posters and then gradually following the brightly colored train with letters A to Z that stretched around the room.
I am convinced that every young person dreams of leaving their hometown, going to a larger city, and making it “big.” That was definitely a dream of mine. Born in Memphis, I moved to Jackson with my family at the age of four. Jackson is my mother’s hometown. This is when my understanding of what made living in Jackson special began.My siblings and I were in a childcare program, and Jackson Parks and Recreation’s summer program is where I met many friends.
I moved to Jackson a starry-eyed eighteen-year-old ready for the “real world.” I came to Union University to play volleyball and study my way to becoming a chemical engineer who would change the world with brains and athleticism. Three months into my first semester, I had quit volleyball and was failing at my chemistry courses. A few days into my second semester, a tornado blew away all my belongings, including those starry eyes.
You could say I’m a reluctant convert to Jackson, Tennessee. Prior to accepting a job at Union University, I had only ever been to Jackson once—an emergency bathroom break at the Starbucks on Vann Drive. Even when I agreed to the offer, it was with a begrudging sense of the inevitable. My wife Beth and I knew if we turned down the job it would be the wrong choice, but there was nothing in us that relished leaving the vibrance of a city we loved for the sluggishness of a lackluster town we didn’t know.
When I tell people that my family moved from Seattle—and that we didn’t move to Jackson because of family or a job—I often get the response, “Why would you move here?” Really it all started with woods. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, about his own time living in the woods, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
My first semester of graduate school in Greensboro, North Carolina, the main thing I remember about poetry workshop—besides the necessity of snacks to feed the muse—was a diagram that my professor drew on the whiteboard one afternoon. Becca wrote WHAT THE POEM IS ABOUT above two intersecting arrows. Then, she labeled each end of the arrows. Viewed as a compass, the west represented the start of the writing process; the east represented the end of the writing process.
It seems quite contradictory to write a piece on why people should stay in Jackson on the eve of our move to Nashville. After eight years of choosing to stay, the decision to leave didn’t come easily, and I certainly put up a fight. However, I had to come to terms with the fact that sometimes a dream is for a season, and it’s okay for dreams to develop towards other places. You don’t have to abandon a sense of “place” once you move.
I often think of the power of words. The words others use to you about you, the words you use. The words that came before us and the words that will come long after we’re gone. The very same tool that can inspire and lead to greatness also can be used to cut down, leaving only rubble where something wonderful should have stood. Jackson could be either of those, and the power is in those who call it home.
Strong is a word I used to hate. What does strong mean? What is strength? I feel like Pontius Pilate as I ask these kinds of questions. When I graduated from Union University a semester early, summa cum laude, I was called strong because I had achieved something. When I crawled out into the barren wasteland called the economy, I was called strong because even though I contemplated suicide, I kept trying to live.
There is nothing beautiful about a neighborhood razed and left for kudzu and vines to swallow trees whole, while grass begins forming veins in the cracks of the abandoned streets. There is nothing beautiful about a lot tended only enough to keep back tall grasses. So when I say I love the patch of abandoned land called Westwood Gardens, I get that it’s kind of weird.
This past Saturday afternoon I dropped by Lisa Garner’s Love Day Pop-Up Shop at the Neely House in search for a little something for my wife and two daughters. And while I walked out with a small stack of mini valentines for my loves (thanks, Courtney Searcy!), I left being reminded of why Jackson has my heart. As the sun began to slowly warm my skin from the cutting breeze, I realized it had been nine years since I last stood on the porch of the former Murphy Hotel.
I got my first tattoo when I was twenty-three years old. I worked for it, too. I was married at the time, and it took me two years to convince my wife that I should have one. I guess the compromise was that it would be a cross, which was hard for her to argue against. I picked the cross off of a poster-sized print hanging in the tattoo shop. The design was “flash,” which is a stereotypical design of a tattoo, but I didn’t know that at the time. I knew I wanted a tattoo, so I picked one out.
After my divorce I almost left Jackson to live on the Appalachian Trail, expecting to leave for six months and return somehow different, new, and with a long beard. I also contemplated living in my Subaru, hopping from town to town like a wandering nomad. I even considered becoming a farmer, finding friends among the crops and pigs.
Familiarity. That would be the first word that comes to mind when I think about why my wife and I stayed in Jackson following our marriage. For one, I was still enrolled at the University of Memphis and taking night classes at the old Lambuth campus. I was also in my third year of working at Green Frog Coffee Company, and my wife had gotten a job at Union after graduating from there.