Ronda Rich
Syndicated Columnist
About a year ago, Tink and I were visiting our friends, Don and Debbie Reid, in Staunton, Virginia.
In their living with the overstuffed chairs and sofa, the four of us had settled into a long, easy conversation. The kind you have with people who are your kind. Don’s phone beeped with a text. He checked it, took a moment to absorb it then softly said in that melodious voice, “It’s from Davis.”
Davis is their grandson who is amazing at anything he chooses to do. One night, he found a video and watched a pianist play an old song by the band Chicago. By the next day, he could play it just as well and, now, two years later, he is being paid to play with his cousin at weddings and various other gigs. That day, though, Davis was responding to a text that Don had sent, congratulating him on a statewide baseball honor he’d received.
Don read it aloud. “I’m just glad that you’re the ones who are proud of me.” Don’s eyes glistened. “That’s a line from a song I wrote.”
I thought I knew every Statler Brothers song recorded. “What song is that? I’ve never heard that line.”
“It was an album cut. The song is called ‘You Can’t Go Home.’” Later, I found the album, “Pictures of Moments to Remember” and listened to that song over and over. It talked of the people who had loved the young man and the advice “just do the right thing and you’ll be proud, just wait and see.” And, of course, concludes with the line that Davis had texted.
It happened that the album came up in my playlist one day while I was driving alone. Suddenly, it had new meaning to me. I’d just released a new mystery novel and introduced the loveable, admirable character named Stella Bankwell. People talked about her so much that she had truly come alive and now I think of her as a real person.
When I introduced the book at a luncheon on Sea Island, in the audience sat my seventh-grade teacher, Mrs. Kathy Lovett. I told the story of how Mrs. Lovett had said, “Class, I have an essay I want to read. It’s one of the most perfect stories I’ve ever read and I’d like you to view it as an example.”
It was my essay and, truth be told, it was written in stone that day that I would be a writer. “I got an A+ and Mrs. Lovett rarely gave an A+.” I looked over at her beaming self, and said, “Did you?” She shook her head vigorously.
As Stella Bankwell, her best friend, Chatty, and the other characters catapulted the book to bestselling status, there were congratulations from those who had known me since birth as well as others who had slipped into my life as the years trickled by.
At a football game, I ran into my niece who had been at a book event the previous day, “I AM SO PROUD OF YOU! I take you for granted but yesterday, I saw what you mean to people. One woman drove three hours to meet you.”
Tink, my adoring (not an understatement) husband, often takes me by the shoulders, looks at me with tears in his eyes and, choked up, says “I am so proud of you. So proud.”
My home economics teacher, Jean Trotter, bought one of the first copies at the drugstore and announced, “I taught her how to knit. But I never thought she’d be famous. I’m so proud.”
“You done good, cuz,” my cousin, Vicki said, after reading it. “And Ralph and Bonelle would be, too.” When she mentioned Mama and Daddy, my eyes pooled and a lump choked back my words.
To quote a poet friend: I’m just glad that those folks are proud of me.
Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of the new novel: “St. Simons Island: A Stella Bankwell Mystery.”