Nobody lives here anymore. Suzanne and her brothers come for a weekend every two or three months. The rest of us get to be here once a year if we're lucky. I don't know how much longer that can last. Suzanne wants to keep the place forever. Her older brother wanted to sell the day their Father died and her younger brother goes back and forth.
This big ole house in Fort Valley, Georgia, contains the only roots Suzanne ever had outside of our marriage. Her Father, Col. Bob, was an Air Force pilot so the family moved every year or so. While Suzanne has romantic memories of "growing up in Europe", she didn't have any roots.
After a final overseas assignment in the Vietnam War, Col. Bob declined to train young pilots for what he had come to consider a useless war, and the Air Force put him in a desk job at Warner-Robbins. Not one to languish a slow professional death, Col. Bob bought this house and retired at fifty or so to fix it up.
For the next thirty-five years, Bob and Martha lived in this one big house in this one little town. Bob played golf every day and fished in Florida when he wanted to. Martha visited us in Columbus, Mississippi, and later in Annapolis, Maryland, for months out of every year.
Our kids spent long summers in this house, and we all had wonderful holidays and long weekends here. Finally, Suzanne had roots.
With four bedrooms, ten beds, several pull-out sofas, and a dozen sleeping bags, there's room for Suzanne and her brothers and the children and the grandchildren all at the same time. Then there's the wood burning stove and the kitchen table that can hold twenty. My God, this is heaven on earth.
Suzanne's Mother and Father died a few years ago, and the house lost it's heart. We don't all get there at the same time much anymore. But - that last Thanksgiving - now that was really something!
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