- I met my granddaddy at six years old, six and a half to be exact.

My brother and I were adopted by a Methodist minister and his wife, they weren't the warmest or kindest people.

So when we were informed that we were going to meet our new grandparents, some of the people responsible for raising them, we were understandably nervous.

But our last foster home had been a farm, and I loved all that outdoor space with fields and barns to explore.

Their mention of the great white farmhouse piqued my interest.

And so the next day, we piled into his old Yugo rattling our way down two hours of cracked rural highway.

We finally turned onto a little two-lane road and then turned onto a long pea gravel drive, and the white farmhouse came into view, stately and tall with an enormous magnolia tree shading half the house, dogwoods and pecan trees dotted the yard, and I could see a barn just past a rolling pasture and two sheds behind the house.

A wraparound porch beckoned you to come sit a spell.

We pulled around back and parked behind an old boxy Chevy, and I could see a huge vegetable garden, a small vineyard, and an orchard.

As we unfolded ourselves from the Yugo, an older couple came bustling out the back door, a petite woman with a cloud of white hair and a broad smile, and him towering over her a gentle giant at 6'4" in the spitting image of Andy Griffith, they met us and welcomed us warmly, her with hugs and him by taking our tiny hands in his huge paws and patting them softly, calling us each by name.

I swear there was a literal twinkle in his eye.

She opened the porch door and a whoosh of cold air hit us carrying what has become one of my favorite fragrances, Miracle Grow.

(audience laughs) We were ushered through the makeshift greenhouse back porch.

Wooden shelves lined the room loaded with plants of all varieties.

We passed a rustic mud sink, half full of water with some fat catfish swimming in them.

We did eat them later.

In the warm yellow kitchen, grandmama said about making us kids cheerwine floats, and granddaddy took us on a tour.

Through the formal dining room, anchored by a long mahogany table out into the open foyer area with a staircase, I caught a glimpse of a comfortable den, complete with a console TV set and its rabbit ears capped with tinfoil.

But he turned, led me around the stairs to a set of French doors.

He pulled them open to reveal a stunning study, floor to ceiling bookshelves packed to the brim, a huge desk under the window, books and periodicals open and marked.

This was the space of an intellectual.

What I didn't know then was that this man had dropped out of eighth grade to hop trains and do odd jobs across the nation with his brother during the Great Depression, so their mama didn't have to feed him.

I didn't know that he had worked his way up from being a gas station attendant after returning home from World War II to being the southeastern regional director of a prestigious insurance firm.

I also didn't know that my adopters had told him, I'd begun reading at three and had an incorrigible spirit.

In my short life the men I had met were cruel and not to be trusted, but I could tell immediately that he was not like them.

In that moment, he looked at me and I looked at him, we were just kindred spirits, and he was the first person in my life to truly see me.

Over the next few years, our visits on that farm were easily the best days of my childhood.

My adopters would drop us off, practically scrambling to get away.

He and I would wander the fields and orchard, his pocket jingling with quarters as he quizzed me on multiplication tables and historical trivia, one quarter for each correct answer, I spent that later at the Piggly Wiggly, and he would listen to me tell my stories for as long as I wanted to tell him.

One visit, he practically bounded up the stairs, two at a time like a kid in his excitement to give me a gift, an electric typewriter to write my stories.

He believed in my little gift.

In June of 1993, I was eagerly anticipating our summer visit to the great white farmhouse.

The phone in the kitchen jangled.

A moment later, I heard a guttural cry and the receiver dropped cracking on the linoleum floor.

He was gone just like that.

In those few short years, my granddaddy taught me more about love, kindness, and respect than anyone that I'd ever met, and he never had to use a belt to do it.

He and that farm were my first true home.

It was many more years before I met a man who truly saw me like that again, he's here, I married him, (reader chuckles) but sometimes late at night when I can't rest, I wander my own home and I look at our family pictures, and I hope that I make every one of my children feel as seen, as heard, as unconditionally accepted, and as at home as my granddaddy did for me.

(audience cheers and applauds)