Rachel and I drove to Virginia for her biannual Sandbridge Hammered Dulcimer Week. For those outside the HD world, this is the place where a very particular people dispel their excessive enthusiasm for the instrument by playing together 33.2 hours a day times 5.

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This is also the place where my red-headed child drags me out of bed in the early mornings for walks on the beach so she can obsessively search for sea glass, interesting shells and half-dead or dead creatures that she carefully carries back to the water hoping to save.

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She occasionally makes it back to our room just before supper and plays a song for me on her back up hammered dulcimer in our room. (Because she hauled TWO hds to Virginia and she is not tired of making music).

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After one late night jam, she returns to our room, gets ready for bed and in her southern voice says, “I’m gonna spread out like a MAAN. And crack open a BEER.” Then she takes a swig of her “beer” (Coke), swishes it in her mouth and gets choked.

It is a good week. But a long one away from home.

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HOME

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HOME

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HOME

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HOME

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HOME.

The place where they DON’T water your plants when you are gone.