www.lowcountryjoe.com: Newsletter

A View from the Marsh:

Hello from Daufuskie

The heat pumps are working overtime as I settle into my leather recliner and continue with Pat Conroy's "The Water is Wide." It's December and these "things" that somehow take heat out of the chilly Carolina air warm the old Lighthouse to the delight of the Savannah Electric Co. Christmas is almost here..again.. and Mary is scurrying about transforming the room into something out of the December issue of Southern Living Magazine. I'm right in a captivating part of Pat's Book when he is stranded on a May River sandbar when I'm interrupted with "Honey...do you remember where we put the extension cords?" Hell, I can't remember what I had for breakfast this morning let alone last years stupid cords.. but to achieve marital bliss and in the spirit of the season I get up from old faithful and rummage through beat up storage boxes in the spare room.

Mission accomplished, I'm back on Bluffton's May River agonizing with Pat over his frozen feet and shattered ego as he settles back and waits for the incoming tide. As the book progresses, I am fascinated by the story's plot of teaching impoverished black children in the old Maryfields School just down the dusty dirt road from my home. I now have a renewed appreciation for this still standing modest structure that is now the meeting place for the Daufuskie Island Community Association. Where Conroy once introduced children to Bach and Beethoven adults now make plans and have visions for what the Island of Daufuskie will be like in the year 2020. Where children once made a paper collage on a still in-tact blackboard adults pin up Zoning maps and plan for the much sought after concept of "controlled and managed growth".

Mary breaks open the box containing "the lights" and I instinctively know that it's my time to get into the act. With patience, the tangled mass is unraveled and like many of our Christmas's before the tree begins to transform into a small version of Washington's National tree .. And, as an extra special treat this year we have a new addition to the light show " candle bubble lights"! My search for these lights from my childhood was rewarded on a recent shopping trip to Beaufort and I waste no time putting them in a place of honor on the fireplace's hand crafted mantle.

I turn off the overhead lights and once again sink into the comfort of old, soft leather. The heat pump's warmth combines with the mesmerizing colored bubbles and I'm off into La-La land. There are no sugar plums dancing in my head.. simply because I have never seen a sugar plum...but I do dream about Daufuskie in the times of Conroy, when things seemed simpler and when the water surrounding the Island was truly a barrier to the souls that lived their lives here. I do dream about the times when simply receiving a shiny red apple at Christmas made a child happy. I do have heartfelt feelings for the young black children that lived on Daufuskie Island when Calibogue Sound may as well have been an ocean and when the "water was truly wide."

Have a great Holiday