There is a photograph on my wall, taken from an airplane sometime in the last century: a white-roofed brick farmhouse, a dark stand of oaks, plowed fields running off in every direction, and a dirt road going by. It was the home George and Lucy Davis built, and it reached my wall the way nearly everything of theirs has reached me — hand to hand, mother to daughter, down through the women of my family until it eventually made its way to me.
I never met
them. George died in 1963 and Lucy in 1974, both before I was born. What I have
of them is a stack of documents, a handful of photographs, two long
remembrances their daughter Martha wrote, the memories of my grandmother and my
mother, and some photos of quilts. So this is not a story I remember. It is one
I pieced together — which, given how these two spent their lives, feels like
the only honest way to tell it.
 |
| The home George and Lucy built near Piedmont — the photograph that hangs on my wall. |
Let me start where they started.
