It was wonderful to have the Pamela’s Girls all together this Christmas.
How many years has it been since we were all together over the holidays? It has to be over twenty years - which is nearly impossible to believe.
Uncle R and I thoroughly enjoyed our time in South Carolina… the hospitality, great conversation, tasty food, hugs, smiles, laughter and even the tears that we Pamela’s Girls shed Christmas Eve as we opened the presents that touched our hearts in differing sweet ways.
CiCi & SS are ever their kind & generous selves and I savor the moments that I sit with them and drink in that sense of home & roots that I tap into whenever around them. And – I just love listening to Mommy M and SanFran S; hearing about their adventures & interests. They are certainly two rare and wonderful young women! Am I biased? Yes. Is it the truth anyway? Absolutely!!!
After leaving South Carolina and heading for our annual long-awaited Holiday Visit with PT & Pamula in their Georgia cottage, Uncle R and I decided to make a quick pit stop in Columbia. The snow falling on tall Carolina pines and drifting down onto green bristling palmettos was amazingly beautiful but impossible to capture in a photo. The South Carolina State House and its copper dome wreathed in swirling snow is also a truly rare and wonderful sight. I love checking out Columbia as we pass through and this departure was no different. My old hometown always appears as a strange simultaneous blend of familiar and foreign.
As we attempted to get back on the interstate we found that the entry ramp had been blocked by a police car – obviously there was some ice making that roadway unsafe. Since I was going to take a driving leg of the trip, Uncle R pulled out his iPhone and started taking us to an alternate access for the highway. As we drove along – me trying to recognize exactly where we were in a town that has changed immensely since young college-aged me drove away to Tennessee – I suddenly realized with a thrill of interest that we were driving along a road very close to where Mommas used to live.
I’ve driven past our two family homes almost every time we’ve passed through Columbia. I never can resist. They look so different now, but there is the ever-recurring desire to brush up against the past, feast our eyes on familiar places and test our memories out against the present.
But I had never had the courage to drive past Mommas’ old red brick duplex. Not since she left it in over twenty-something years ago to move in with Pamela. That little haven was such a special place to me that I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing it changed, possibly run-down & abused. It was too integrally “Mommas”.
I told Uncle R that we were close to Mommas’ house and he encouraged me to drive by. “I don’t know if I can….” I told him as we drove. “What if it looks bad? Maybe I should just remember it as it was when she was there…”
I really didn’t think I wanted to see it… but as we came up to Lakeside Avenue…. I turned in. I felt the lump in my throat turn into a trembling lip and that in turn dissolve into some sniffles. Why? I’m not sure, but Uncle R was so sweet and patted my arm as I cried all the way to Mommas’ old house, cried as I turned into the next road to the left to turn around just like Pamela always did and cried as we paused out front so that Uncle R could take a photo for me. I cried as we drove away and still felt my eyes fill up with emotional tears as we hopped onto I-20 toward Atlanta. I couldn’t explain my tears but felt really grateful to Uncle R as he lovingly smoothed my hair, rubbed my arm and said how happy he was to see where Mommas had lived long ago.
Our little unplanned, unexpected voyage past Mommas’ duplex… Serendipity?
According to the dictionary Serendipity is - the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. The origin is cited to the date of 1754: coined by Horace Walpole, suggested by The Three Princes of Serendip, the title of a fairy tale in which the heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
No. I don’t believe that it was.
It was a small but generous gifting from a God Who is indeed in all of the details. A Lord of our hearts Who is vitally interested in every cry of our hearts and every strand of the fabric that is us and that He has painstakingly woven through our lives.
More than once in my life I have found myself taken somewhere and given an unexplainable but precious experience that I simply know and recognize is just an overflow of His generosity. This was one of those times and it was a poignant combination of seeing a place long cherished and seeing it with my beloved best friend.
I wish that I had an old photo of Mommas’ house to put side by side with how it looks now. Maybe CiCi has one that she can share.
Happy New Year to my Pamela’s Girls! I pray that the Lord will fill 2011 with His loving adventures for you too!
Auntie J
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