LIVINGSTON — Mother's Day is a time to show appreciation for mothers and reflect on the lives they have given their children. For one Sumter County family, generations of women have kept history alive by tending to the house that built them, against all odds.
Sidney Freeman grew up in Lakewood, a downtown Livingston treasure. The 7,000-square-foot Greek Revival raised cottage was built in the 1830s by Joseph Lake. Passed down through daughters and determined women, the home still stands, a beacon of devotion and time-tested strength.
For Freeman, the home's walls enclose a deep-rooted love of family. Just four days after Mother's Day in 2019, Freeman lost her mother, Olivia Gaines Jones Collins, known to everyone in town as "Sweetie Pie." Just three weeks later, she became a mother herself.
Facing an unbearable loss and the most magical gift at the same time was a bittersweet experience for Freeman.
"I was so happy," Freeman said. "I had the most precious little baby boy in the whole wide world, but I was broken. So broken. And it took me a long time to understand that grief and joy can coexist. She would absolutely love and adore my children so much she would be the best grandmother ever and it just breaks my heart that she didn't get that opportunity earthside."
Through the loss, Freeman's desire to keep the family home going continued. She knew her mom would want her to continue maintaining the home she had also grown up in.
As a teen, Sweetie Pie worked in her mother's dress shop. She went to college, met her husband, David Collins, and became a dental hygienist. She burrowed her way into the hearts of people in Livingston.
"She had a nickname, which is a right of passage in Livingston," Freeman explained. "If you asked anybody from Livingston, 'Do you know Olivia Collins?' They'd be like, 'I don't know her.' But if you asked, Oh, do you know Sweetie Pie?' They'd be like, 'Oh yeah, she cleaned by teeth!"
For 35 years, Sweetie Pie kept the smiles of Livingston bright and shiny. In the meantime, she married Collins at Lakewood. It had become a tradition since the early 1900s to marry at the home.
In the meantime, she devoted time to her only child, Sidney.
"It was just me and her for a really big chunk of my life," Freeman recalled. "My dad had a business that was pretty demanding time-wise, so there were a lot of times it was just her and I and we were so close and she truly made every part of my life just magical."
As time took its toll on life, things began to change. Freeman went off to college, and her mom was left to bear the brunt of an aging homestead.
"It was always her dream for this house to be something," said Freeman. "She was steadfast in everything that she did to try to save it."
However, by 2010, the old home's maintenance became too much.
"So many things needed to be done," Freeman remembered. "It was just astronomical and the renovations and stuff. My mom had been trying to renovate it herself for so many years. She sandblasted all of the tin ceiling that's in the hallway. She sandblasted all of that on her own. All the doors that are raw wood, she sandblasted all of that herself. She patched plaster. She tried her absolute hardest to fix it but she was a dental hygienist. It wasn't really feasible for her."
The home was left vacant and by 2012, was listed on the Alabama Historical Commission's Places in Peril. A photo of the home showed red dirt stains on the white, cracked paint, the tattered wood porch and aged roof.
After college, Freeman moved back to Livingston and decided to take on the burden of rehabbing the old home place.
"When I tell you, like people thought I was crazy when I did this when I was 22 years old and I had no clue what I was doing, I mean, I just had to keep the faith," Freeman said. "It's because of God and my mom, really. She instilled that love of God and my faith."
While it was quite the undertaking, Freeman had her mother by her side every step of the way.
"It's the house I grew up in and I have so many fond memories," Freeman said. "I have pictures of my mom in this house. She is in every detail of this house and so this was her love. She loves this house so much. And at first, I didn't understand any of her reasoning behind it, but I guess it's just in my DNA now. I can't help it."
Years of cleaning and renovating were what Freeman calls a labor of love.
Freeman is thankful that her mother got to see the renovations and knew her family would continue to care for the home before she passed away. Sweetie Pie saw her daughter marry Jake Freeman, and she knew the couple's love would help preserve her family's legacy. The wedding took place in 2017 on the double staircase at the front of the home.
"When Jake and I moved in, we were the first single family in the home for generations," Freeman said. "The house was shared, which I think is really cool, and I think it says a lot about like the community and the village that it used to take to raise a family and to live life together."
"But we cleaned everything out and started the renovation process," she said. "The first floor of the house was a complete gut job. I mean, we excavated like 18 inches of dirt, came back, and poured a concrete slab. We had a structural engineer come and do a complete survey of the whole house to begin with because I wanted to be sure that we weren't just going to put a band-aid on something that deserved a bulldozer."
Freeman was inspired to open her home to others and allow them to step back in time. Lakewood welcomed its first bed-and-breakfast guest in 2018.
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Years later, the Freemans have three children, James Lake, Liv and Lula.
The children are growing up on the property, and, as their mother, Freeman wants to make memories for them the same way her mother did for her.
Now Freeman enjoys lying on the bed swing that adorns the freshly painted porch.
As she hears the birds sing, her memories take her back to scenes of birthdays and time with her mother, who made everything picture-perfect. Even though the memories may fade into grainy film reels in her mind, just like Lakewood, Freeman hopes they will never disappear.
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