Dear Oliver – On the Move (August 2025)

You don’t know it yet, but you will soon be living in a new house. Your parents have bought a home near me in Avondale Estates, so you will be leaving the home you were born into on Ridgedale Road in the Kirkwood neighborhood. I don’t think you will have any memories of that house, but you may wonder about it someday. Once again, our lives are on a parallel track.

When I was born, my parents lived with my dad’s mother. We lived with Grandma Porter for the first year or so of my life until we moved into the house that my brothers and I were raised in. I wrote about my grandma’s house in an article titled “Being Part of the ‘Village’” in my book, Roaming, Rambling, and Reminiscing, Musings from a South Georgia Mule Wagon. 

I am happy that you are moving into my neighborhood because you will be living just a few blocks from my house. But I do have fond memories of being with you as a baby in Kirkwood—the walks around Bessie Branham Park, swinging in the bucket swings, and picking you up from the daycare behind Turner AME Church. But your memories will begin in Avondale Estates, and I can’t predict what those memories might be. All I know is, I look forward to being a part of them.

Love,

Grandpa