"This old house"

"You need to call your parents". It was the voice of my mother-in-law. Ray Parker and I were visiting some of his friends in Winston Salem and his mother's voice was quite urgent. So, I called home.

"We've had a fire", daddy told me. He had been napping as mother ran an errand. The dishwasher shorted out and the breaking glass on the French doors into the kitchen had awakened him.

    *the house that had been my grandparents' home when I was a child and now belonged to my parents;

    *the house my grandma Nesmith had found when she wanted to come to the country in Jacksonville in about 1930;

    *the house where my aunt Beth was born, where family and friends had long enjoyed gatherings including my wedding reception 10 years before;

     *the 1887 house that had seen more additions etc. that you can imagine.  

It was scary - and sad - but with insurance - lots of help from many dear friends - the house was rebuilt into a place of beauty.

That was 45 years ago.

Five years later I brought my children to live in that house with my parents who stayed there until 1996.  They had  promised a home for Granddaddy Nesmith and they honored that until he died in 1994. His wife, Evelyn, stayed until it was time for mother and daddy to sell Ryar Road and move to a new location. They had lived there since 1968.  

By then my mother's call for us to come to their house on a Saturday for a hot dog had become  all too often. That's a family joke -- a call like that meant there was a need for labor on the house.  Daddy was tired and we were busy with our own families.  Besides we (my siblings and I) had decided Saturdays should be made for enjoyment NOT working on an old house.

Sometimes one of us will ride by the property. The memories far exceed the beauty that we remember – it is not very pretty these days.  It's a far cry from the way it looked when we left it. 

That was more than 25 years ago.  

By now - the aunts who grew up in that house are great-grandmothers (except for Aunt Beth); my siblings who grew up in that house are grandparents (except for Lester) and my children have the memory of the fact that in 1982 when we were without a home - their grandparents said to me "you all can live with us".

 And we did - for the next 14 years.

 Was it perfect???  Nothing is ever perfect.

However - it was a wonderful place for friends and family to gather and I'm very grateful that when I felt so very unwelcome in my marriage that there was a house that said 

 Welcome Home!

 May your life have enough sunshine, 

                                                      To make you appreciate the shadows