Written by Mary Margaret Miller White
I first met Barry White at a Bobby Rush concert in Oxford, Mississippi. I had just turned 21 and he had recently moved to the “velvet ditch” as a Mississippi State post-grad. We chatted as casually as one can while Bobby Rush and his lovely dancers are on stage, and talked about who we knew in common and where we came from. I call the Delta home and am fiercely proud of my rural roots. Barry hails from Jackson, and is the first to tell you about the “old St. Joe” or the Dutch Bar or Fields Café.
See, Delta folks usually navigate north to Memphis, so at the time the most I knew of Jackson was the strangely-lit basketball court at Jackson Academy and the post-shopping stop at Old Tyme Deli where my mother and I would sip coffee and share pastries. All fine memories, but no real reason to love the city. I told Barry on that February night of 2003 that I would “never live in Jackson, Mississippi.” But seven years of dating and a million trips to the Capitol City for weddings, parades and big meals in Belhaven changed my mind, and now we are here to stay.
On October 1, 2011, Barry and I got married and celebrated our nuptials on the grounds of Welty Commons. This hidden gem of a coffee shop and courtyard was the perfect setting for our sort of celebrating. We had a band in the gallery, a cake in the big house and bare feet in the fountain. The bluest sky and the crispest breeze unfolded on that October day, allowing us to open every window and door on the grounds. Mandolin and fiddle sounds were filtered only by laughter. Our friends and family danced so hard the wooden floors of the gallery room seemed to turn to foam, bouncing guests from one number to the next. We ate and drank and never wanted the day to end.
That light-filled afternoon seems magical and mystical to me today, but I do remember clearly that everyone felt at home in this space devoted to Miss Welty’s birthplace. And now, I feel at home here in Jackson where Barry and I have decided to plant our roots. Barry often reminds me of how I once said I would “never live in Jackson, Mississippi,” and I have learned over the years to eat my humble pie and be grateful for my marriage and my home here.
Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings has always been a favorite, and in just a few lines, Welty sums up the lifetime of searching, learning, and loving I’ve tried to describe here:
“It is our inward journey that leads us through time – forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge.”
Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com.
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