It is Tuesday and time to write a 'Slice of Life."
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When my granddaughters play with Mardi Gras beads, the necklaces invariably get all tangled up together, into one big mash up of colorful plastic, where it is nearly impossible to find a beginning string or a way to separate them. The girls always bring the mess to me and sit right at my elbow as I struggle. There is no right way to approach the glob; any strand can be pulled out, in any order. When order is resumed, it is often mere minutes before the girls have tangled them up again. I’ve wondered if maybe this is the point of the girls’ play, to purposefully tie these chains up into each other, just to watch me fuss, taking them apart.
Yes, I hid the necklaces in a cabinet after one long morning of this “fun” recently.
Where to begin a short introductory story on Hilton Head Island and me? My many memories and reflections are similar to that knot of beads. I’m here and I’m lost in thought, trying to tease things apart.
Should I tell you how I first visited here when I was in grad school at the University of South Carolina, how my grandmother’s cousin had bought a home here on the ‘old, established’ part of the island, and she welcomed me for a weekend? I remember feeling so out of place, in this quiet, secluded, beautiful beach location. It felt far too fancy for me.
Is there a necklace strand for before the island’s development? What is the history of this place? Who were the indigenous peoples? Who were the Black slaves who worked the plantations?
There’s now a strand for the Gullah people, buried in the cemetery we happened upon, that I wrote about yesterday.
There’s another strand of necklace, with my parents retiring here, buying that cousin’s home, when she and her husband needed to move into assisted-living in their frail, elderly years. My parents had many happy years here, far from all five of their children/families, enjoying their independence and the beauty of this island.
Tony and I did make many happy spring break trips here with the boys, over the years.
Notice the strand, always present, of how uncomfortable I was that the community was “gated,” only for owners and their guests, and almost everyone was white.
There’s a strand where my parents encounter their own health crises, how Mom aged into dementia and Dad into Parkinson’s, a ten year period where we ‘kids’ made countless depressing trips to offer additional care. I lived closest to them, some ten hours north. Finally, my parents moved into assisted-living near my brother, in Maine. Oh, and then we had the ugly task of clearing out their home here and putting it up for sale, leaving us all a good bit soured on ‘life on the island.’
This week’s vacation features a strand where we pedaled by my parents’ old home and it’s been completely transformed and is now a rental property that we cannot afford to lease. All the beautiful landscaping that my father tended daily – well, that has been eliminated and replaced by a pool.
When our vacation week ends, I wonder if all these melancholy musings will be back up on a shelf, like those Mardi Gras necklaces.
starfish stranded
weeping for its ocean home
died alone
while all the tourists oohed and aahed
at their find
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