Dear Reader:

More and more lately I find myself purposefully pausing in the midst of family gatherings (with all the fun and craziness associated with them) to ponder the moment. *Before most of the family crowd arrived last Thursday (July 4th) John took a moment from chef duties to grab a picture of the first swimmers (or like Eloise..floaters) in the pool.

It was the ‘calm before the storm’ arrival of the rest of the ‘gang’ …amazing aunts, uncles, cousins, and extended kin from each and all sides. As I watched John take the photo from the screened porch…I realized that a memorable pictorial moment was being frozen...and would soon go down as a ‘good old day‘ memory before much time had passed.

As time seems to go faster and faster…”Good old days” have begun blurring into each other with comments like ” What happened to June….summer just started and now here it is July 4th” or as Walsh left to go pick up Mollie and Rutledge from the airport… the family insisted he leave Eloise and Lachlan in everyone’s care to make it easier for him.

We were all remembering the fateful day he left John and Mandy’s to pick up Mollie and newborn Eloise from the hospital with the boys in the car fighting treacherous snow and icy conditions during the great snow storm of January 2018.

Walsh and the boys ended up staying one day and night over at John and Mandy’s since Eloise had to have a last-minute treatment for jaundice before she was permitted to leave (a fateful delay)

All the cousins knew was that they were snowed in with their other cousins and having a ball…(It was all the adults who were worried about the weather and getting Mollie and Eloise home safely…along with the boys.)

This is definitely a memory the children will remember as the best time of all…snow in the low country!  (While as adults…we loved it too…but were so anxious about getting Mollie and Eloise, our snow angel home. Eloise wasn’t worried…she slept right through it all.

Everyone held their breath until we got the text they were all home safe and sound with the newest addition to the family. The electricity was working and they all got to sit around the fire and enjoy a beautiful rare snow fall with little baby Eloise. (So many family stories return when we all gather together to remember them…good, bad, scary, sad, or just plain funny. Family goes through it all with each and every member.)

Another observation I have made upon reflections of daily encounters with our fellow man is the amazing things that can happen when we stop to help someone else…sometimes we end up helping each other when we both need it simultaneously.

…Such is the case in this true story by a contributing member (KindSpringer) of the KindSpring website. “They help me, I help them“) dibhook

“It was raining hard and nearing dusk. I was late for an appointment in a nearby city that I knew only by GPS. And now my phone had died. The usual interstate exits were closed. I couldn’t see, it was raining so hard. I couldn’t figure out how to get where I was going or how to let my appointment know I was likely not going to make it there.

I stopped at a McDonald’s in an impoverished part of town and walked up to what appeared to be a mother and her teen daughter. “I’m sorry, but do you mind, is it possible for me to look up a number on your phone and then call the place and let them know I’m lost?”

She handed me her phone and then told me she was lucky she had her phone, it was getting ready to be turned off because she didn’t have enough money to pay the bill.

The young girl and the mother seemed to be clinging to each other and talked together as I made my phone call, not really paying me much attention as the people at the other end of the phone told me to come on, I’m not too late, and then told me how to get there.

As I stood to leave, on an absolute unplanned whim, I reached into my wallet where I don’t usually have cash and pulled out all I had, a $20 bill. I pressed it into the mother’s hand and then turned to leave quickly, because I didn’t want it to be about me, but not before seeing that she was crying and her daughter called after me, “You have no idea how you just helped us.” And yet, they really helped me. Funny how that works!

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So until tomorrow…”Embrace the amazing potential magic of today’s small everyday moments” (Zina Harrington)

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

I saw this picture on Facebook and discovered it came from a wonderful friend, Jane Eason, a  marvelous social studies coordinator in Columbia whom Carol Poole and I used to work with and for….when we traveled the state putting on presentations for different districts.

Jane had found this photo, earlier, on FB and decided to ‘pass it on’ in memory of all the wonderful history teachers in our country ….way to go! The Declaration of Independence written in chalk on the driveway!