Turkish Meatballs with Mint Yogurt & Tomato Cucumber Salad

Down here, love doesn’t race — it lingers.

It moves slowly like the Mississippi at dusk, winding and wide, carrying years of stories in its current. In the South, we don’t rush affection. We let it simmer, low and slow, like a pot of butter beans on Sunday after church. We trust that time deepens flavor — and feeling.

In the South, love isn't just something you feel — it's something you live.

Love isn’t always spoken in grand declarations. It’s tucked into the small things: a plate fixed just right, the porch light left on, a hand that reaches for yours across a pickup truck. It’s in the way someone says, “How are you today, sugar?” and they mean it.

Here, we love out loud but without the noise. We let love speak in small, faithful gestures — holding the door, remembering how you take your tea, pulling over on the side of the road to pay respects during a burial procession, or stopping to help someone who’s never told you their name.

Our affection comes poured into cast-iron skillets and passed around crowded tables. It’s wrapped in foil and dropped off on doorsteps when life hits hard. Love, here, is layered — thick as humidity and just as inescapable.

In the South, love is in the way we wave at strangers from the steering wheel. The way we remember your mama’s name and your favorite pie. The way we show up unannounced — not to invade, but to help carry what you can’t hold alone.

Our love flows through food, through laughter, through quiet presence.

Through hymns hummed on front steps.

Through hands that hold grief with gentleness and joy with gratitude.

We don’t just say I love you.

We live it. Breathe it. Pour it.

We let it spill into casseroles, rockers, open doors, and funeral lines that last for hours. We give it space to move and swell, to rest and rise again.

You’ll feel it in the way we say, “Y’all good?” and “Call me if you need anything, alright?”

Not just habit — heritage.

Love, in these parts, is something we inherit, something we pass on, like family recipes and old hymns. It’s in the stories our grandfather told us as we sat in his lap and the meals our grandmothers pieced together with hands worn and calloused from decades of doing for others.

In the South, we don’t just give love. We grow it.

We water it with patience, plant it with prayer, and let it bloom in its own time. We don’t dam it up or ration it out. No — we do what the rivers taught us.

We let our love flow. Steady. Deep. Endless.

And if you stay long enough — if you sit still and listen — you’ll feel it wrap around you, too.