ALONG THE LITTLE TALLAPOOSA RIVER, Ga. —
I had made it a point not to return. Once you’ve lived in, loved and left a house, best leave it be.
The “new” owners have had the barn-red house by the river for three years longer than I did. When recently they invited me to stop by while I was in the area, to be polite I agreed. And I know full well that politeness can get you into trouble.
This house wasn’t just any house. It had an old gristmill on the site, and it sat so close to the river you could wet a hook through an open door. The core was 100 years old, but don’t imagine a grand old farmhouse or Victorian. A wing had been added every decade, including the obligatory den of the 1960s, replete with orange and green shag and dark faux paneling.
If houses were fashion, this one would have been a 100-year-old man wearing a leisure suit. I had to have it, of course.
My late husband Don first fixed the hole in the kitchen floor. Then he set to work trying to execute whatever visions I shared. By the time we left the old place, it was hard to go.
It took me about five seconds after arriving the other day to realize the home was in good hands. Capable hands. Creative hands. Many hands.
Max and Sherrie Fulbright have six children and a posse of dogs, including one who looks a lot like my beloved yellow dog Mabel. There are cats and chickens in the yard and baby goats in a pen, Sherrie’s Mother’s Day gifts.
I walked up the old, oddly spaced concrete steps onto a porch where the Confederate jasmine I planted 15 years ago now is full and profuse, fragrant proof I was there. Then I went through the front screened door — a terrific old one the Fulbrights found somewhere — into a perfect and magical blend of what was and what is, a dizzying journey.
The old redwood fence was now the floor. Art was everywhere. Walls had murals. Some walls I remembered were gone. Rooms that made perfect sense had been added, all with big windows to enhance the river view. Did I mention Max designs houses for a living?
Best of all, at the heart of the house, the ceiling had burst wide open and new walls went straight up, at least 30 feet, letting in light and sucking up heat. It was Architectural Digest meets Lemony Snicket. Max made the first cut at night while the children were sleeping.
Beneath the square “turret,” for lack of a better word, ran a homemade table, long enough to seat King Arthur’s knights if Arthur hadn’t insisted on round. Sunflowers and cakes filled that table, and old friends and neighbors pulled up chairs to it. One of the Fulbright children quietly strummed a guitar. There was so much life in that room you could have sliced and served it up like the cake.
I wanted to cry with happiness but didn’t. I’ve never been so pleased about change. You can’t go home again, but you can be glad good people are in it.
Don used to marvel that there wasn’t a square corner in the entire strange house. There still isn’t. And I mean that in the best possible way.
(To find out more about Rheta Grimsley Johnson and her books, visit www.rhetagrimsleyjohnsonbooks.com)
Opinion
You can go home again — for a visit
- Opinion
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
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