Summer Vacation - Day 5

Day Five - South Carolina

It is easy to get lost in these woods. So easy to snuggle on the porch or into the sofa pillows at the cottage, sipping coffee and reading. Joyce has a library in her house. It is upstairs to the right of the stairs next to her computer room and the bathroom. It reminds me of an attic room with sloping ceilings and a small window. The door to the room is a glass door that lets you see in at all the beautiful books. They are everywhere--on the bookshelves lining the walls. There are books on the table in front of the small couch, on the windowsill, and on the floor. There are new books and old books. It is almost too much for our family of readers. When we miss Madison, we know to check the library. She has been found there curled in a chair, nose in a book Joyce has recommended.

I am reading Inkheart. It is a title that I have come across researching books for my children. It is one that Joyce has recommended to me, and I am lost in its pages, enjoying the tale of Meggie and Mo. I have already read Briar Rose. I am not sure that I can go back to the library for there are so many books that I have not read. But it calls to me, and the world outside disappears when in there. Plus, we are alone in these woods with solitude and plenty of time to enjoy the written word or each other.

We went into Charleston, South Carolina today to visit Joyce's children. There is Jason, who is two years younger than Rusty. He has a wife, Lori, and three children, a son, Joel 14, and two daughters, Ellie 8 and Margie 2. Jason still reminds me of Andre Agassi, and it is unsettling, yet exciting until I remember that he is just Jason and not my tennis idol. Joyce's daughter, Mandy, and her husband Chuck have two daughters, Macie, who is almost two and the spitting image of her father, and new to this world Evie, who was born April 30th. We went to Mandy's house for our reunion because Jason's is under construction as he works this summer on expanding his abode.

Mandy's home is a child's paradise. There are toys in the girls' rooms, toys in the play area off of the garage, toys in the living room in an overstuffed toy box, and there is a huge play structure in the fenced-in backyard. The children looked at one another, some meeting for the first time, others getting reacquainted, and then they were off. Children being children in all their innocence.

The adults settled into the living room and kitchen to catch up and for husbands to met husbands and/or wives. Groups were formed, and the talk was of jobs, children, and the past. I grew up with Jason and Mandy. I was older, but not so old that playing with each other was a problem. I can remember Mandy and me against our two brothers. We would push their buttons, knock on the bedroom door and then run, follow them when they wanted to be left alone. We would come together and play board games or cards, and as we got older, we would talk. Our parents were just that, older people who didn't understand us or the way of childhood. How different it all seems as we mature. Now I can sit and talk to Joyce and James for hours.

We feasted on ham and pole beans and took turns holding the baby. It was nice to be with family in a new generation and sweet that the new generation loved each other as we loved each other. It is the right time to come together, and I am so glad that we have done so.

Summer Vacation - Day 4

Day 4 - Fourth of July in Mt. Pleasant, SC

We awoke in our cottage in the woods and had coffee and breakfast before we ventured out to the main house. We sat on the front porch and sipped more coffee and watched the hummingbirds sip their sugar water between the hanging plants.

The children we see in the morning, and then they are gone, running around the property, swinging in the trees, playing in the cottage, better known as "Anya's house." Madison has also discovered the library that is upstairs in the main house. It is a room with bookcases that line each wall from ceiling to floor, and she and Joyce have spent considerable time there discussing and exchanging books.

We left the property at 4:00 P.M. to head to the Mt. Pleasant fireworks celebration. Connie stayed behind, waving to us from the hammock on the front porch. Joyce wasn't sure of the layout, and Connie didn't think that she could handle the crowd with her back problems, so she opted out. We arrived a little before five, and the men dropped us at the entrance and left to park the cars. The celebration is at the site of the aircraft carrier, The USS Yorktown, now a museum. We found a grassy spot right in front of the ship, behind the stage, where Joyce's son, Jason, would perform tonight with his band, "The South Coast Party Band." Behind us were tents of food and beverages and beyond that were the kid's activities with jumping blow-up toys, etc. We spread out our blankets, ate some southern ribs and BBQ, and then took advantage of the $5.00 tour of the Yorktown.

Years ago, my friend Kim and I took a boat out to the aircraft carrier, The USS Kennedy, off the coast of Portland, MA. It was the biggest ship I have ever seen in my life, and I took thousands of photos of it so impressed by its size and magnitude. Getting to actually go inside the USS Yorktown was the icing on the cake of my aircraft carrier experiences.

We went downstairs into the living quarters. We saw the mess hall, the dental quarters, the sickbay, the bathrooms, the butcher room, and on and on. Further down, we went into the engine room, the machine shop, and the torpedo room. Going up, we explored the flight deck and further up the control room, the map room, the admiral's quarters, and eventually, the pilot's seat. The flight deck was massive, with actual warplanes that we could explore. Only one part of the floor was roped off, and that was the site of the fireworks that would later be shot off of the Yorktown. We spent several hours touring the ship, and we still didn't cover everything.

Back on land, Jason and his band were rocking the crowd that had now grown five times as large as when we arrived. The group was decked out in red Hawaiian type shirts, Jason wearing white sunglasses and playing keyboards and sax. At our blankets were more relatives. Jason's wife, Lori, and two of their children, eight-year-old Ellie and two-year-old Margie, were waiting for our girls. The kids hit it off right away. Madison and Darcy and Ellie took off for the kid's activities, and Anya took charge of Margie and had her at her beck and call. Eventually, all of the kids came together and danced on the grass, stopping periodically to stuff their mouths with Kettle Korn and cotton candy. Ewan fell asleep amidst the noise on a blanket. When he woke, his parents took turns carrying him around in their Baby Bjorn to see the sights.

The fireworks began after dark around 9:30 P.M. I have seen tons of fireworks in my life. I have watched them from the roof of buildings in downtown Evansville, IN. I have seen them over the Gulf in two directions in Florida. I watched them last year over the Lake in New Hampshire, and I have seen Disney World's versions from 4 different parks, but watching them over the Atlantic shot from the flight deck of the USS Yorktown was a sight I will never forget. The Southerners in the low country know how to put on a show! It was the biggest finale in any fireworks history that I have ever seen. It was miraculous.

After the fireworks, many people headed out. Jay and Maya took their children and headed home. We stayed behind and listened to the band. Ellie and Darcy joined the band on stage and played tambourines and cowbells for about an hour while Joyce and I watched from the dancing crowd, our ears forever damaged. When it was all over, we stayed behind talking with Jason and his family, the girls playing tag and running foot races in the grass. There was no sense trying to leave to sit in the traffic.

We made it home after midnight and wearily headed for the showers and our bed in our cottage nestled in the woods. We may never leave here, but don't tell Joyce and James!

Summer Vacation - Day 3

Day 3 - Heading to SC and Cousin Joyce's

I was awakened this morning by a phone call.

Connie: "Darcy peed in the bed. Come and handle it." 

And we were off! 

We set a time of departure for 11:00 A.M., and we actually stuck to it. We were on the road by that time with Tom at the wheel in charge, no rain forecasted, and nothing but blue skies. We weren't falling for that, however, so the "Weather Tech" luggage carrier was full of luggage wrapped in trash bags....just in case.

My MapQuest directions were pretty simple. Get on 95 to US 17 N and then turn left on Tidwin Rd. and then went on Palmers Ridge where our Cousin Joyce lives. It would be approximately 2 hours and 35 minutes. Our Boston relatives, Maya, Jay, and two children, were coming in by plane and would rent a car and drive from Charleston. They were landing at 10:30 A.M. with about a 40-minute drive. We were hoping to arrive within an hour of each other.

Ha, ha, ha!

We did just fine driving along with only one pit stop at the Mt. Pleasant Welcome Center, but then it was downhill. We hit traffic, and it was stop-and-go as we hit lights and motored along at a snail's pace. Tom was a tad annoyed and even more so at the directions. Past the lights, US 17 was a four-lane road with nothing but a forest of trees on either side. If we saw a drive, it was made of dirt and looked to be headed nowhere. 

We drove into Historic McClellanville and drove out of Historic McClellanville, all in one minute. The town is actually smaller than Dugger, IN. Now you see it, now you don't. We saw a diner, a gas station, and some other buildings of questionable origins. We kept driving looking for Tidwin, but after 15 minutes, we realized we had passed it. We decided to call Cousin Joyce, but alas, we had not brought the phone number. We called Jay instead, and Joyce got on the phone to give directions. They were as follows:

Joyce: (spoken in her true southern accent) "WwwwwEeeeeLlllllLllll. Where are you all? What? You already saw the historic district? Oh, shoot, that was something we were going to do for an activity. Take everyone into the historic district. WwwwwEeeeeLllllLllll. Where are you? Okay, well, you need to turn around and come back on 17. You will get to a light. There is only one light. Yeah, that is the light, turn right. That is Randall Rd. You all just passed Tidwin when you were coming. Well, it is a tiny dirt road. I just didn't think of giving you all directions." 

Me: "Uh..."

Joyce: "I'm sorry, I guess I should have emailed you all some directions. Okay, you are on Randall. WwwwwEeeeeLllll, you travel on that road for about a half a mile. No, more like a mile. It is pretty long. You go on that road for like two miles, and then you will come to what we South Carolina folks call the "five points." When you come to that, you will see a dirt road to your right. WwwwEeeeeLllll there will be two roads to your right with a first road, and then a tad up there will be the second road. They are right together. There will be the first road, but you won't take that road. Well, I don't think I'm explaining that very well. Picture a star. You will want to turn at the point of the star that is toward the bottom. Start at the top of the star, and it won't be the first point to your right, but the second point. Sort of like turning and then having to turn in like a U-turn."

Needless to say, we went down at least 3 of the "5 points" roads until we found the correct way, which led us to Cousin Joyce's driveway. At this point, we realized we were in the middle of nowhere. And I mean nowhere. Joyce had told us she had a bedroom in the house for Connie and a small guest house with a pull out couch downstairs and a bedroom upstairs with a double bed and two twins. We were expecting a bunkhouse with lots of spiders in the windows. Driving down these bumpy dirt roads, we were expecting the worst.

We turned into Joyce's road and traveled toward the house we could see hidden behind trees. Once we cleared the trees, we were in the middle of the most beautiful piece of picturesque property that I have ever seen. It was like something from the movies.

The house is a two-story building with a substantial southern front porch complete with four white rocking chairs, a porch swing, and a hammock.

The inside is decorated with antiques from Joyce and James' childhood. Windows cover the entire house, and each window comes with its own view.

From the large wooden kitchen table, you look out at what Jay and I call the bayou, but in South Carolina, it is a swamp. The most beautiful swamp with trees and hanging Spanish moss. The windows from the living room look out at the guest house and trees with swings for the kids. There is a herb garden and a vegetable garden.

The opposite side of the house looks out at the wooden barn and the pump house, which looks like a little house in itself. The front of the house overlooks the yard and the fenced-in field high with Argentine Bahia grass. There are egrets, hummingbirds, green herons, wild deer, frogs, and alligators.

We sat on the front porch and drank sweet iced tea laced with mint from the garden and fresh shrimp salad. The weather is perfect with a breeze to keep us comfortable swinging on the front porch and no rain in sight.

We talked and caught up and then decided to check out our sleeping quarters. We couldn't have paid for a better place. It is a cottage nestled beneath the trees. We have a living room, a fully stocked kitchen, a laundry room with a bathroom and shower. Upstairs are two bedrooms, one with twin beds, the other with a queen bed and there is a bathroom.

The back door leads to a small porch and rose garden, and it too looks out on the "bayou." The front windows look out on the neighbor's pond, but we are not to trample on to this property, although the call of the hammock hung between two trees.

We sipped mojitos with fresh mint and chowed down on roast beef and veggies from the garden. We talked into the night at the kitchen table as our family is known to do, frogs listening to us as they attached themselves to the windows overlooking the "bayou."

We are seriously in the middle of a magical haven.

Summer Vacation 2007 - Day 2

Day Two- Savannah, GA

Three things I learned today in Savannah - by Darcy (8 yrs. old)

1. There are a lot of horses pulling carriages.

2. The waving girl died of a heartbroken.

3. Eat seafood!!

Three things I learned today in Savannah - by Madison (Ten yrs. old)

1. The waving girl statue was about a girl who stood at the Savannah River and waved a towel to the passing boats. She was waiting for her true love to return by ship. After 4 years, when he didn't return, she died of a broken heart.


2. Eli Whitney came to a plantation in Savannah to tutor the owner's three children. He invented the cotton gin, which picked the seeds from the cotton. It was an invention easily duplicated, so he only sold three of them before other people copied his design.

3. Georgia is known as the Peach State

Before we left Florida, I researched Savannah, a place I've always wanted to visit since reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. One of the things I found was a trolley tour that would take you through 16 stops around the city. You can ride the trolley all day, getting on and off as many times as you choose. Although my husband scoffed at this as he prefers to walk everywhere he goes, we agreed this would be easier for my mother and the children.

The lady at the front desk of our hotel suggested riding the trolley all the way through first, picking out the destinations that would interest us, and returning to debark at said destinations on the second go around. We took her advice.

Our tour guide was Terry. He was an older black gentleman with a sense of humor and quite a bit of knowledge about the city. He had his script and his schtick well-rehearsed. We started out at the Welcome Center and began touring the city.

The city of Savannah is ancient. It was established in the 1700s by James Oglethorpe, a member of Parliament. Savannah prospered with the discovery that certain crops did quite well in the humid heat of Georgia. These crops were rice, cotton, and peaches. Savannah was successfully captured by General Sherman during the Civil War. Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln, offering him the city of Savannah as a Christmas present, making it one of the few towns not burned by Sherman during the war.

There were several war monuments around the different 24 squares that the city was built around. One of the statues was commissioned from Canada. The city requested that the finished statue be delivered by ship so that it did not touch any Yankee land in its trip to its final resting place. The figure was then put in the square facing the enemy, north.

Other interesting points of interest in Savannah are the homes of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. Her birthplace and the house that she lived in after her marriage are two points of interest in any tour, as is the first house of the Girl Scouts. We skipped her birthplace, which is next door to a famous bed and breakfast that once housed Kevin Spacey while he filmed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." and instead opted to check out the home of Andrew Low II, Juliette's father in law.

Inside the home is a little tourist shop where we watched program detailing old Andrew's life, and by the time it was over, we were doubled over from all of the tragedy that kept striking, not Andrew, but all the women in his life. It was worse than any soap opera.

Andrew married his first wife, and the two of them began work on building this mansion in Savannah, but before they could move in their four-year-old son died, his wife died in childbirth, and his uncle and partner in the cotton industry croaked as well. Poor William moved into this house with his two young daughters and eventually remarried. This wife bore him 5 children, one of whom died right after birth. You would think he would have learned by now to stay the hell away from his wife, but obviously, he was a horn dog because he knocked her up again, and she died during labor just like his first wife!! Connie and I were laughing and crying by the time that miserable saga was finished.

Andrew's son eventually inherited the house, married Juliette Gordon, and moved into the house. Their marriage was a miserable one (of course) because, on the day of their wedding, rice was thrown. Rice landed in Juliette's ear and gave her an infection that resulted in her going deaf. You can imagine where Connie and I were when that was told. Seriously....on the floor. On and on this history went.

We saw the Mercer house, the house in the book and movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. We saw the third oldest hospital ever built. We saw the cemetery where Confederate soldiers are buried. We heard of ghosts that inhabit several of the famous houses that line each square. We passed church after church after church. We finally got out at St. John's Baptist Church.

It was built in the 1800s but had recently been restored. We went inside and toured the church. It is beautiful with stained glass windows depicting stories from the Bible, large marble columns, intricate architecture, and starting on one side and circling the entire church are enclaves of the Easter scene of Jesus' trip to the altar where he was nailed to the cross.

Tom began explaining this to Madison, so I turned to Darcy and began teaching it to her. We started at the beginning and went all around the church with me trying to summarize the whole thing, and when I finished at the cross, Darcy looked at me and said:

Darcy: "But I thought Jesus was Santa Claus."

The homes are amazing; old and built exceptionally well. Each is a different architectural masterpiece. We couldn't begin to even see the whole city on our tour. I would have loved to have just walked the town reading every piece of information that is available on signs throughout, but the kids weren't all that enthralled, and Connie could not begin to do that walking.

We ate at a cafe in the Marketplace, and while in the Andrew Low house, it began to rain again. We waited it out for a while (that is how we came to watch the film on his life) and then decided to walk next door to the carriage house that Juliet had turned into the Girl Scouts headquarters. As we exited the Low house, it poured, and we hurried to the office only to find that the door was locked. But for three dollars apiece we could get inside. Yeah, because those Girl Scouts don't sell enough cookies in February and March!

We left and began hiking toward our car. We got as far as the overhang of another church (no entry allowed) where we waited while Tom ran the rest of the 3 blocks to retrieve our car. We were soaked to the skin, but glad we'd made the trip.

Day two ended with dinner at the Cracker Barrel (Connie stayed at the hotel) and a game of Hearts (I won!). Tomorrow we head to South Carolina to visit relatives and tour Charleston.