BEAUMONT, France – I’ll never forget the first day I saw the little French millhouse. It had been my choice as a holiday rental, a blind decision, sight-unseen except for one blurred photograph, made because of the romantic description of its former role as a mill and the promise of a lagoon.

This was in the days before the internet, and you didn’t take virtual tours.

Four of us arrived late one summer Sunday as the red roses climbed the stones and the sunflowers in fields all around rotated toward the Dordogne sun. I was ecstatic and probably irksome in my self-congratulatory enthusiasm.

“It’s perfect,” I announced, daring anyone to disagree.

It had been 20 years and some months since I first saw the small stone storybook house in the Dordogne countryside. It has remained my all-time favorite house, anywhere, ever, and I have photographs and Christmas cards and all manner of sentimental scrapbooks to prove it. It was French perfection.

I lived in the fairytale rental for one month, with the others, and we spent much of our time convening out front on a wide patio. We raced baguette boats in the lagoon, watched the snazzy French farmers ride by on tractors and the grazing sheep across the way.

It wasn’t a perfect time, but close. Travel always gets better in the rearview mirror.

I wanted to see if the house was still there. I wanted to see it in the fall. I wanted to see if it remained as enchanting as I remembered. I had tried to find it online to rent again but could not.

We drove about an hour, from another French rental that was somewhat less enchanting, but anything would have been. I had no problem locating the right turn down a dirt road in the middle of French Nowhere. I felt unreasonably anxious.

It was still there. At the end of the path, where the yard meets a farmer’s field, the stone house sat empty and boarded up, more lonely-looking than any place I’ve seen in this part of France.

I jumped out of the car and took a couple of photos, but “No Trespassing” signs were everywhere, and I didn’t linger. The rose bush was still there, but not blooming. The table where we’d solved the world’s problems was gone. The ducks weren’t in the lagoon.

The surroundings seemed different, not July profuse, not as inviting. It was depressing.

And I remembered something my mother had said countless times. When we vacationed in Florida, where we nearly always vacationed, and I begged for postcards, usually, I got what I asked for. Mother loved them, too.

Every now and again, when our travel funds ran low, I guess, Mother would say, “No. Hold that memory in your heart.”

And now I think that might be the best way to keep things from spoiling. Let memory do the work. There’s no going back.

The husband who shared that house with me is dead. The friends who were with us are no longer part of my life. The little house that has stood there since the 13th century remains, but my short page of its story has turned.

A lot of water’s been under the bridge and over the mill wheel. The trick is to work at creating new memories, then to hold them unmolested in your heart.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s most recent book is “Hank Hung the Moon … And Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts.” Comments are welcomed at rhetagrimsley@aol.com.