I hope you've had a wonderful week! Once a month, I'm going to have a guest writer tell you what it is to them to be a belle. This month, my dear friend Lindsey tells us of an experience her mother had while visiting her in school. Enjoy!
I’m a yankee. Well, not really. What I am is a rural midwestern corn kid turned Army brat who accidentally ended up in the south. It’s no matter, though, the idea is all the same. As I got accustomed to being the south and got used to a whole lot of “Where you from, ‘cause you ain’t from ‘round here,” I started to notice something in particular about the supposed “southern belle.” Sure, they’re sweet. They’ll step out on a limb for you sometimes, but you can bet that when they do, EVERYONE is going to hear about it. It left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. My mind has changed, though, so don’t stop reading because you’re mad at me.
My all the way corn fed, rarely left the landlocked state of Illinois, can’t pump gas and hates driving (well, she doesn’t drive, she just rides) on the highway grandmother was always one for doing things right. Or “proper.” “Proper, proper, proper...” There have been times in conversations with my grandmother that I would swear if I heard the word “proper” one more time, I’d scream. Even now, the very uttering of the word makes me shudder. But, the lesson was driven home. Over and over. Just do things right.
Charity asked me to write something about what it meant to be a Belle. First, you don’t have to be southern. And, as the story that I’ll get to (and that she actually asked for) will show, boys can be Belles too, at least in spirit.
I moved to Mississippi for college, and it was there that I, and my impossible to please mother, finally learned what that “southern hospitality” thing that everyone talked about was ACTUALLY about. For me, you can’t have southern hospitality without a Belle, and Belles are at the very heart of it. My mother arrived in Mississippi for a visit some Friday afternoon. I, of course, had to show her around the Sorority House. They made her feel like they’d known her forever. She hardly went more than a few minutes without someone asking her if she needed anything. Hospitality. That’s what that is. Even though we happened to be in the very deep south, this still wasn’t southern hospitality. Though, I will say that every one of those ladies were true Belles.
My mother really got it during a day’s outing in Starkville. We didn’t do anything in particular. Nothing really even stands out, except how incredibly nice everyone was. She mentioned later that she was SURE that she did not walk by a person who didn’t smile and say “hello.” She said that she was looking for something in a store and a young man approached her and asked her if he could help her find something. She, in turn, said something along the lines of “Oh, you work here?” His response is the perfect example of what it means to be a Belle. He said, “No, I just come in here a lot, so I figured I’d be able to help you.” That, THAT, is southern hospitality. Take a quick run to somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon line, and I’d be willing to bet that will NEVER happen to you. If you’re reading from somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon line, I challenge you to change that. Because, after all, you don’t have to be southern to be a Belle.
So, you don’t have to step out on a limb to help someone in order to be a Belle. You don’t have to do ANYTHING. All you have to do is smile, say hello and look people in the eye. It’s a glorification of the golden rule, that’s all. And when you do things right, or properly (shudder), you’ll very quickly find that you’ve inadvertently made someone’s day. Sure, they’re probably going to look at you funny. That’s only because they aren’t used to it. They’ll go home and think about you though, and be impressed by your simple kindness. You never ever know what someone’s day has been like before they come across you. And you may not ever get to see how much of a difference you’ve made in someone’s spectacularly bad day. Sure, there are days where you just CAN’T pull out the nice face because it’s just been that bad. But those are the days where you need someone else to.
(Lindsey Curcio is a lawyer living outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. She and her husband of 1 1/2 months, David, have several dogs and a couple of cats, and "get away from it all" as often as they can on camping trips around the southeast.)
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