Sentimentalism, frowned upon among journalists, comes easy to me. I’ve learned to keep it at bay much of the time, but every now and then it overtakes me.
I looked up the definition. Sentimental means “of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness or nostalgia.”
As we begin to pack up our home of almost 17 years and prepare to move to Baton Rouge, there is no word that captures my state of mind better than that definition.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m excited about our new-home-to-be. I love it and am looking forward to learning the city. Our new home has the potential to be its own kind of wonderful, but it is totally different from the magic place we’ve lived for so long and where our daughters have grown up.
Japanese magnolia
In this strange house, full of quirks, you enter from the front door to the middle level of the home. It has a small galley kitchen — and we love to cook. It has a tight spiral staircase up to a level that has what would surely rank in the world’s top five strangest bathrooms. It has a downstairs that flooded in the Great Flood of 2016. My husband has turned the downstairs into his art studio and created all sorts of beauty.
As strange as the home is, it has worked for us. Its windows that look out onto the Vermilion River and the giant live oak tree with a mighty branch covered in resurrection fern have been a balm for my soul during good times and difficult ones. My husband built a small dock around two cypress trees above the Vermilion. He fishes there most afternoons.
And, if you’re one of those people who says, “I wouldn’t get close to the Vermilion! It’s so dirty!” I ask you, “When was the last time you were close to the Vermilion?” It is, for the most part, an overlooked treasure of Acadiana. For the past 17 years, I’ve watched the work The Bayou Vermilion District has done on and for the river and I am impressed. I encourage you to get in a canoe or other watercraft and take a ride on the Vermilion and see if your mind isn’t changed. The river has its own magic that I wish everyone in Acadiana could experience on a more regular basis.
Late Friday afternoon, I was working and looked out a back window toward the river and saw my husband and younger daughter fishing from a small bench on our dock. I grabbed my camera, full of sentimentalism, and took a photo, knowing these days are numbered and that the two of them may never have the chance to sit there and do that again. I know they both realize it too.
They sat there for a long time and never caught a single fish.
I don’t think they minded.
Earlier in the week, I looked out one of the front windows of the house and saw the many blooms of the Japanese magnolia I planted, with my own two hands, about 15 years ago. Actually, I planted two of them that day. One flourished and grew tall with blooms aplenty every spring. The other shriveled up and didn’t make it. It was crowded by too many other plants and had to fight for nutrients.
I’ve planted Japanese magnolias in every home where I’ve ever had a yard — because the house where I grew up in Forest, Miss. had one in its front yard that bloomed every year on my birthday in late March.
Spring comes earlier in Acadiana and the Japanese magnolias bloom earlier with the warmer weather. Both of my daughters have come home in the last few weeks, primarily to help take care of me with my broken leg and subsequent surgery, but also to say goodbye to the house that, to quote Miranda Lambert, built them.
When I look at the blooms of a Japanese magnolia, I am full of, yet again, more sentimentality. Those pink and white blooms remind me of my happy childhood and home.
I hope the beautiful flowers will always do the same for my girls.
I understand the new family who plans to buy our house in a few weeks has two young sons. I wish for that family that they will know even a fraction of the joy, laughter, love and happiness we have known in this home.
I hope in 20 years when those boys have grown up that they too will smile and think happy thoughts every time they see a Japanese magnolia. In the meantime, I hope they’ll have a bench to sit on with their dad on the dock by the Vermilion and fish.
Whether they catch anything or not.
And on my end, when we get to our new home in a couple of weeks, even before the boxes are unpacked, I’ll be out scouting for the perfect place for a Japanese magnolia.