It just so happens that I got to do something today that I have been wanting to do for a long time.
A friend was sweeping off the front porch of the little mill house that Danny and I use to live in when I rode by it this evening. (It still stands in front of the old Cotton Mill.) I stopped and asked if he had bought it and he said he had. I then asked if I could go inside and look around it, as Danny and I were the last Mill workers to live in it.
He said I could!
It has been over 42 years since I was last in that little house that we use to think of as home. I stepped into the living room and it surprised me that it was still painted the same color! The old wooden mantle piece had been taken out by someone, but you could tell where it had once been. I use to have two crystal lamps sitting on that mantle. My mama and daddy gave them to us when we got married. They were both accidently knocked off and broken before we ever moved out of that little house. I cried for days about those two little lamps. We didn’t have money for much furniture, so we had one big sitting chair and a single iron bed upside the wall with huge pillows on it for our sofa! Come to think of it, I guess that means that we actually had a daybed before most country folks ever heard of them didn’t we?!
This little house was what they call a shotgun house or a rabbit box house which meant that it had three rooms, straight in a row, one right after the other. So the next room use to be our bedroom. I went in there and saw the tiny closet which we used to put our clothes in. Guess we didn’t need a big closet back then. I could see in my mind how our double iron bed sat catty cornered next to the wall…how we had to use a string to pull the ceiling light on and how we tied it to our headboard, so when we got up in the dark we could cut the light on first!
When I stepped into the kitchen, I saw that the sticky shelf paper with tiny flowers printed on it was still on the top of old white sink in there where I had put it ! I could just picture the old wringer washer sitting by the window and the white push button stove with the double oven and the deep well, sitting up against the wall.
I stepped into the little bathroom off the kitchen and immediately a long gone memory came rushing back to me. One day when I got up to fix Danny's breakfast as usual, that smell of the sausage that I was frying made me sick as a dog. I barely made it to the bathroom in time before I got violently ill!
Lord, I thought I had a stomach virus that morning…I found out a few days later that I was pregnant with my first born.
If I were a rich woman, I would buy that little house…just so I could go sit in it from time to time and ponder these precious memories of days past. I could go there when I need to feel close to Danny again.
As it is, I am grateful that I got to do something today that most folks don’t ever get to do.
Just for a few minutes, I got to go back home again.
GOD BLESS YOU ALL.
