Dear Reader:

As a writer, like the main character in this unusual perception of life, love, and endings that don’t end ( On Fire Island) … Julia Morse is spending her last summer on her beloved island… there is only one catch… she has already passed.

Until Brooke and I moved to the Lowcountry ( Charleston) I had never felt that I was home…the geography of Eastern North Carolina and the Piedmont of South Carolina … had me living among immediate and extended family members whom I loved but there was never a deep loving attachment to the land itself. In fact… I felt detached… homesick for a place I had never seen.

My love affair with the Lowcountry actually started when I was in high school and visited USC for a high school weekend orientation… knew I wasn’t going there but a friend was driving and we had decided to visit her sister in Charleston and skip most of the orientation.

It was early March and still cold and blustery in Columbia but the sun started coming out around Orangeburg and suddenly the I -26 interstate was bleached in sun… and speaking of ” bleached” … the closer we got to Charleston the lighter the roads got-going from dark asphalt to ” white” highways that seemed to promise-sun, beaches, oceans… I was home… at last.

It took me a few years to turn that benchmark weekend into my beloved home but it happened… and my ( now adult) children have thanked me profusely over the years for making that choice… they too love the Lowcountry… heart and soul!

How many times have we described our beloved home as a piece of heaven or God ‘s home. So when thirty-seven year old Julia has a decision to make … follow the light and her grandmothers voice at the end of the proverbial tunnel or spend one last summer on Fire Island… her piece of heaven on earth with everyone she has loved totally and completely …she chooses one last summer.

You can only imagine how many diverse new forms of love, gentle humor, sweet sadness, new perceptions, deeper understandings develop this last summer for the people closest to Julia and the places that shaped her.

So until tomorrow…

Today is my favorite day-Winnie the Pooh

Rutledge wrote home to Mollie and Walsh saying …he had never felt closer to God than at Camp Ridgecrest! 💗

In the last few days I have heard from many of you readers with such positive and encouraging comments… it has turned my days upside down with happiness … and one reader and I discovered we are related briefly through marriage but more importantly through friendship! Thanks Angela for the connection discovery and all because you wanted to know the history behind the Pawleys Island Shell. God Wink!

Carol… thanks for the memories… brought a smile to my face!! And we have several new subscribers… that always makes me happy!

Yesterday Ben told me that he is now the new ” Pastor” at their little church group… by default …since the assigned minister has been in absentia… told Ben his new name was Pastor Barbour … telling his story!

Yesterday I also hugged Eva Cate and Jake since the family is leaving for their vacation Wednesday… Eva Cate will miss her Winnie…