Long Trip Home



I sat on the wicker swing, thinking about the ties that bind. About my mother, and peeling peaches with her on the back porch, dreaming about the day when I would leave this place and begin a life of my own, with not the least thought that this wonderful man would walk right into my life, leaving me drained of myself, filling me with his own dreams beyond my wildest imagination. Only God in heaven knows the extent of those dreams and visions that played to the hilt on the stage of my life, enhanced through the years by His amazing love and grace and brought to closing moments with continued joy unspeakable and full of glory. I was exhausted. Filled to the brim with memories. Of things I will never forget, duly reminded by this old plantation.



I had to leave. I turned around to watch the wicker swing moving back and forth like a scene from an old movie in slow motion, looking up to the attic windows of the old plantation house. I slowly took the steps down, touched the hawthorn trees and gazed upward once more into the towering old magnolias my daddy loved. For a moment I imagined myself driving away in his '57 Chevy, out onto the dusty gravel road. I drove past the mimosa trees, in full bloom with pink feathery flowers blowing gently in the warm southern wind, down the green trail to the Indian Mound, and I thought of Ray. How I love him. Even after all these years.





From House Not Made With Hands
Jane Bennett Gaddy, Ph.D.
Chapter 27, Long Trip Home
pp. 180-181

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