THIS OLD HOUSE (April 17 - 28, 2018)

                                                                                 (Botany Bay)

The flights back from Springfield, Missouri were a whole lot different than the flights out there.  Going, we were prepared for a funeral.  Returning to South Carolina, we were rejoicing in the complete restoration of our son's health.  As we landed in the Savannah, Ga. airport we were excited to connect with long time college friends, Jerry and Karen Frye.  They picked us up outside the airport and in an hour and a half we were back at Edisto Beach, SC!

The Fryes live in Eldon, Missouri, where Jerry has pastored the same church for over 40 years!  It was good to be able to spend some extended time with them in a relaxed, slow paced place.  It was exactly what Sherry and I needed after the hectic ten days in Missouri! We made an afternoon trip to a most unique place called "Botany Bay."  Botany Bay is a land preserve overseen by the South Carolina D.N.R.  It was opened in 2010.  Nearly 5,000 acres of two former plantations take you back in time. (The Patriot was filmed on the grounds.)  The most amazing part of the five mile driving tour is the secluded beach, cluttered with dead trees due to the recent hurricanes that have hit the island.  It is beautiful and, at the same time, eerie.

After three days of just lying around and doing nothing which, by the way, we did pretty well,
our next guests arrived.  This time it was Ken and Linda Moore from Ohio.  Sherry and Linda had been friends since 7th grade, and college roommates.  Ken met Linda at college and we have been good friends ever since.  Life took us different directions, so catching up now that we all are retired was wonderful. Edisto Island again provided the perfect place to reconnect.  We took a 2 1/2 hour island tour with a local lady, Dottie Thomas, who drove us through two very old plantations and down a road, the King's Highway, built before the Revolution!  A stop at the oldest Presbyterian church in South Carolina, with a tour of the building and the cemetery, was a wealth of information about the early days of this out of the way island.

REFLECTIONS

Locksley Hall was a plantation home built on Edisto Island for Sea Rice Barron, William Eddings, around 1809.  It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places but is best known on the island as the "House of Tragedy".  Across the last 209 years it has experienced several startling tragic events.   

Two young Eddings children died of diphtheria.... An orphaned boy who went to live at Locksley Hall at the age of 17 accidentally shot a nanny and then killed himself.....A sister burned to death when her hoop skirt caught on fire....A brother was murdered in the stable.... A young mother died during child birth (rumor is that she is buried under the front porch).

How sad it is that this beautiful old home (still inhabited) is remembered for the tragic times and not the good times.  I am sure there were times when the home rang with laughter and music.  I am sure there were times of joy and rejoicing.  I am sure that there were times that were not tragic; times of weddings and healthy babies being born.

I want the home of my life to be remembered for the laughter and the music, the joy and rejoicing.  We all have those times that are less than we had hoped for; times that perhaps were downright tragic.  But it should be how we handled those times that become our legacy.  Again, it's pretty much, a choice.  As long as this old house in which I live is inhabited, it will be a "house of hope".

Just like the blend of the dead trees and the living ocean at Botany Bay, I want my life to blend together the tragedy and the triumph into something to be remembered; something that will make people say, "that is uniquely beautiful."