CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1388627
22 July 2021 Fascinating FAYETTEVILLE Family Focus IN THIS FORT BRAGG HOME IS THE T he cracks on the pretty blue and white bowl are visible only on close inspection, but they are there, nonetheless. Over and over, from one Army relocation to another, Jill Saslav has carefully taken the pieces broken during the move and glued the scenes of sailboats and coastal cottages so they hold fast once again. Then, from Colorado to Hawaii to North Carolina and points in between, she's placed the bowl in the hutch in the family dining room with the other pieces of her collection of Shard Pottery crafted in her home state of Maine. She could replace that bowl with a new, unblemished piece. But then again. "It really does represent all our transfers and moves," she said. "And it represents for us that as much as a move can crack you up, we're still together. It's a symbol of resilience to me." It's a familiar theme to a military family, the task of making a house feel like a home despite the challenges of adjusting to yet another new community, new faces, new schools and the lingering likelihood of deployments. Here in this Spanish colonial 1930s two-story home in Fort Bragg's Normandy subdivision, Jill Saslav has surely accomplished the job with the most thoughtful, memorable and comforting of touches. For her and her husband of 21 years, Col. Andrew Saslav, a home isn't about fancy furnishings or fine antiques or even things that don't crack or chip. "Family is our big focus," Jill Saslav said. "We try to focus on what's important every second that we're together." BY KIM HAST Y | PHOTOGRAPHY BY CINDY BURNHAM Jill says their Fort Bragg home has the same floorplan, though reversed, as a previous home in Fort Benning, Georgia. That allowed her to know where furnishings would fit without the need for measuring. She said she likes to use shades of blue in the family dining room, which complement her collection of Shard Pottery's Dover Foxcroft pattern from her home state of Maine. She adds homespun touches to the collection, including a jar filled with her daughter's seashell collection.