Why Kudzu?

When I was a kid and we were travelling, I'd always look for kudzu as a sign that we were getting close to home. As an adult who's lived in eight states, kudzu really has come to be a symbol of home for me. And while Asheville isn't as covered up with it as my old stompin' grounds of North Alabama, it is present here too.

So when I was trying to come up with a name for a blog, Kudzu Asheville seemed to fit. Because we have a great life in a modest home, for a while I thought about Living Large in Asheville, (subtitled Living Large in a Small Space) or some variation of that. But I was afraid my Generation Y friends might not get the Living Large reference. And then there's the fact that I'm not exactly svelte, and I didn't really want to confuse folks about the nature of my blog.

Kudzu seems right because it bespeaks the South to me. I don't know about you, but I've always felt more Southern than [insert state name here]ian (Alabamian in my case). When my husband (aka Amp for absent-minded professor) and I got married, his mom said "I can't believe Amp is marrying someone from Alabama!"  It might as well have been Mars. See folks in South Carolina have this whole state-pride thing going on that I was not familiar with. Then a few years later we moved to Texas and that was taken to a whole 'nother level. People in Texas have bragging contests on how many generations their families have been in Texas. First or second generation just doesn't cut it. One of Amp's classmates in law school told us that she'd never consider moving out of Texas. In this global world, that kind of thinking is hard for me to get my head around.

So I'm just a 40-something woman who's trying to find her voice and decide what she wants to be when she grows up. And though my accent isn't especially Southern, I'm finding that my voice is.

Photo Credit

The flowering kudzu shown on my profile is used courtesy of Peggy Greb, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.