We wake up to glorious sunshine. And we need to get going, or we’re not going to see much of Natchez! Breakfast is in some building away from the main house. We use the map the staff provided us to find our way to the breakfast building. Yesterday was drizzly, no good day to do sightseeing, but today is perfect! Not only is the sun smiling down on us, the weather is warm! I’m finally getting to experience a warm Southern day. The grounds are gorgeous, like walking through a manicured park. We pass a pond with a fountain in the middle, and a bridge, an inviting little pagoda. There are magnolia trees in full bloom – in February! Every now and then we pass a piece of sculpture. We spot pretty white lawn chairs placed strategically around the grounds, as though beckoning us to stay a while and rest here. But sadly, we must move on. We’re already almost too late for breakfast, and we still have to check out.

As we rush to try and get breakfast before they chase us out, we see a young woman sitting out on the terrace, drinking a cup of coffee in the sunshine while looking at her cell phone. She looks up at us briefly. Suddenly she’s waving at us with a big smile. Robert walks over to her and they hug. “Melissa! What are you doing here?”

“I could say the same! Robert, what brings you here?

Robert introduces us. Melissa is not exactly a friend, but someone who Robert sometimes runs into at some of the parties he’s invited to in Natchitoches. We’re over two hours out of Natchitoches now, and we’re still running into people from Robert’s life! Robert invites Melissa to come and join us for breakfast. She’s already eaten, she says, but she’d love to join us for a few minutes. She’s in Natchez on an overnight work trip. “I always stay here when I’m in Natchez,” she says. “I always stay in the carriage house. That’s where the best rooms are.” That’s where we have just spent the night – right next door to Melissa. She tells us we had the best room in the entire hotel. We talk about life in general and a bit about politics. Melissa is black, and she tells us about how people in her community compare President Trump and former President Obama. We have an interesting, lively conversation, and then she has to leave us to go to work.

After she leaves, Robert tells me that he has seen and talked with Melissa at several parties he’s been invited to, but he doesn’t feel comfortable talking to her because she seems to be so intent on showing off whatever she has to show the world – her intelligence, or her taste, or by talking about things in her home.

A distant memory from my childhood surfaces. My parents, who both grew up impoverished during the depression, became increasingly prosperous, but were very reluctant to show it off in any way. For that reason, my father never drove a Cadillac, but he criticized my uncle, who drove one, and another uncle whose wardrobe my father considered too large and ostentatious. My mother never let me wear red clothes. They also criticized black people for driving gleaming Cadillacs, “trying to show off”, they said.

Just a couple months before this visit, I visited my sister and African-American brother-in-law for Christmas. Sam was listening to the audio book “Becoming”, by Michelle Obama. “It’s amazing listening to her,” he said. “There are so many parallels to my own life. Just like her parents, my parents worked incredibly hard to make sure we children all had the best possible careers, given our race. We had to be better than the rest of them in order to be good enough.” I’m not like that. I think I was always afraid to reach for more than what was easily within reach. In my youth I chose to live as a hippie. One of my “achievements” was to accidentally end up at Woodstock. I regret that I have not achieved more.

I tell this story to Robert, who admires this free-spirited side of me. I think I understand Melissa a little better than I would have because of what my brother-in-law told me. And now I think Robert understands more of why Melissa may seem to be showing off.

While checking out, we learn that there is to be a guided tour of Monmouth Inn at 11 am. If we go, we will get to learn a lot about the history of the estate we have had a taste of, as well as receive an inside glimpse into something of Natchez. We eagerly sign up for the tour. Our tour guide is an African-American woman who proudly displays the opulence of the home in which she spends most of her day. The thing that impresses me the most, though, is a plaque outside the house, outlining the history of the estate. The plaque informs us of something our guide has not mentioned – that after the Civil War, the owners of the house could not afford to keep it. They were forced to sell parts of the land to former slaves. Reading this, I feel a sense of jubilation, realizing that those who once labored as slaves on this property later became the owners of it. I rejoice for people like Melissa, whose ancestors could never dream of sleeping in the carriage house unless they were unpaid mistress-slaves of the owners. Melissa, a descendant of slaves, is free and affluent enough to live in the same opulence the slave owners enjoyed. Here, a hundred and fifty years or so after the Civil War, in Monmouth Inn, black and white staff members work alongside each other, each of equal status. Knowing this, I feel it has been worth it to visit the South. There is some justice and retribution in this world after all.

I discover another “plaque” of sorts in the visitor’s restroom – a description of Southerners. I am utterly charmed, reading this.

What lovely values! These people are some of the friendliest and most polite I have met in all of America, no matter where I am in the South. They treasure memories and their private and collective histories. Their countryside is beautiful. They are the best hosts, who make me feel so comfortable, even inviting strangers into their homes, like Margie! I do see many cultures here, seeming to get along pretty well, although I think there could be more mixing. And I have tasted their cuisine, so different and much more carefully prepared than what I usually experience in America. But – it still feels foreign to me. It’s a lovely, magical world I’ve entered for a few weeks.

Our tour has taken an hour and a half. There’s not much more time left for us. Robert has to get back to Louisiana, and I need to get to Tennessee, hopefully by the evening. We agree to part, and each do a little more sightseeing on our own. I feel a pang of regret, having to part from Robert. We have grown much closer over the week. I have grown closer to everyone I am visiting! Their homes don’t feel like anyplace I could settle down in, but I have felt more and more at home spending time with them.

I drive alone into Natchez, park the car in the center of town, close to the Mississippi River, and start strolling. At first I rest my eyes, gazing at the mighty river I saw so often during my childhood and youth. It is the river that divides Minneapolis from St. Paul. How many times have I crossed it, driving into Minneapolis? But here it is amazingly wide and majestic.

• 

Then I walk away from the river, following the map in my hands, towards the center of town. It doesn’t take long before I see my first building. I am almost swept off my feet viewing it and all the magnificent buildings surrounding it. Homes as big as palaces, one after another. I begin to understand that this was truly once the wealthiest city in America. The synagogue, the oldest in Mississippi, looks more like a Greek temple than what I would imagine a synagogue to look like. Across the street is an equally impressive Episcopal church.

Looking up at the flags flying from one of the mansions, I am confused by one of them, a dark blue flag with a white star in the center. I later read that it is the “Bonnie Blue Flag“, one of the flags from the Civil War period meant to symbolize the secession from the United States. I have no one to guide me now, no one to answer my questions. I can only assume that it hangs there to symbolizes someone’s pride in being both a Southerner and a US American. I hope both flags flying means that the owners stand for integration. Maybe it shows the “timeweaving” aspect of being Southern that I just read about – a treasuring of memories and tradition.

I must move on. I wish I could spend several days in Natchez, perhaps when they offer their open house tours of the mansions. If I had come just one month later, I might have had been able to have a tour of many more mansions than Monmouth Inn. But I have run out of time. Clouds are building up in the sky again, and precious daylight hours are slipping away from me. But I am very grateful to have been able to see a little of the city that was once the wealthiest in the land. Farewell, Natchez.