Dear Reader:

I love reminiscing through the Maine photo book Anne gave me, recently, as a gift from the last adventure we shared in her ‘neck of the woods.’

One day, in particular, stands out in my memory…I was sitting up front with Sherri (in her big red GMC truck)… she was a long-time friend of Anne’s, while Anne sat in the back and laughed her head off at us ‘fighting that uncivil war‘ one more time with our “peculiar” accents. It was hard to keep a straight face the whole day we were on this excursion… as we each mimicked the other’s MA vs. SC expressions.

Our first stop was to a blueberry field near Sherri’s home…I remember Sherri’s bursting into song singing the last few words of Strawberry Fields by the Beatles…but she sang (quite loudly) the word “blueberry” ….at first I thought she was just kidding…since we were in “blueberry” country… but when I realized she was serious…I couldn’t let her go through life thinking it was “Blueberry Fields Forever”! 🙂

The episode just got funnier and funnier…Anne and I had to google it to convince Sherri she had the title and  lyrics wrong the whole time.

*However…after looking at this photo Anne took…the fields did look more like strawberry fields with their reddish tint. (It was fall and after the blueberries have been picked and the  crop has been gathered, the fields do take on a red hue.)

It isn’t, however, the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields that I wanted to highlight today… but a slightly lesser known song from the Beatles last album…Abbey Road.

The famous cover shows the four young musicians from Liverpool crossing Abbey Road…walking away from the studio where so many of their songs were created ….the only song they needed to finish that day was appropriately called “The End.”

This one phrase from that song (that featured musical solos from all the talented musicians) ended their time together.

Named after the road on which they did most of their recording, Abbey Road was the Beatles’ final album. Along with two of George Harrison’s finest songs, the highlight is the medley which takes up the majority of the second side.

The album has been featured on several “best of” lists, including a rank of #14 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote the lyrics collectively, but it was Paul McCartney who wrote the famous line that expressed his love for the journey they had all taken together. Today there is a plaque in Liverpool with his famous line on it.

I can think of no more fitting tribute on how to live our lives. Think about it…”The love you take is equal to the love you make.” We need to spend our time on earth bringing as much joy and love to each other as we can ..so we can take that same amount of love with us into the next life.

*Last night I remembered that the first year we moved to Laurens, 1964, was the year the Beatles arrived in America with a bang…“I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” I sang it badly, every morning, on the way to Laurens High School where I was a freshman.

I made new friends quickly because of that song…we would pass notes in freshman math class citing which Beatle was our favorite and tally the results each day. (Mine was Paul!)

Reflecting back on those fun times of my youth…little did I know that this song would later take on new meaning…When it would be God’s hand…that I wanted to hold… I did…and do…still tightly today.

So until tomorrow….

Since God is LOVE…I think we can add…an extra line…“All you need is God.”

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh