Beach, Music, and Home

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.

Daughter

She’s not a little girl any more.

Yet, Rachel will always be my daughter.  Even if her foot has been bigger than mine for over a year now.  Even if she gets taller than me.  Even when her hair begins to gray and her first wrinkles appear.

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Aunt Jane and Maw-Maw Rachel came for our birthday celebration.

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Sidney helped Rachel with her new watch.

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Then Prairie helped her with her watch.

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She requested something “flamingo-y.”

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Sidney got a hug for those socks.

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One of the best gifts . . . a camera discarded on a shelf, its first purpose fulfilled, finds a new purpose in the hands our girl.

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The birthday girl gifted us with clarinet music.

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Lincoln accompanied her on guitar.

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Maw-Maw Rachel loved it when Prairie and Lincoln sang hymns.

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Happy Birthday, my sweet Rachel, my daughter.