Pawley's Island (Continued)
Life was so strange. I thought I was going to move into my family's house and write my memoirs, but I was slightly embarrassed to admit that all I had done was exercise and slide in and out of social commitments with Huey. It wasn't the worst thing, really. I mean, heaven forbid that I had a little fun. Besides, the thought of reliving my past through writing it all down? Well, let's just say that I had yet to arrive at the moment where I felt comfortable enough to play with my inner gorillas. They could wait. In any case, I questioned the real value of an autobiography because it seemed like vanity in the extreme. It wasn't like I abandoned a career as a backup singer for the Rolling Stones and that my writings would become the latest zeitgeist on sex, drugs and rock and roll. Frankly, my therapist recommended that I give writing a whirl, saying it might be good for an exercise in closure. Instead, I had closure with everything else—my frantic law practice, my marginal personal life and my nice expensive therapist. I simply closed up my house in Columbia and came back to Pawleys just to think about things.
I imagine you could say I'm a lucky woman, at least in terms of inheritance and assets. My mother died when I was very young, and then Daddy finally gave up the ghost after a short bout with leukemia six years ago. Since I am an only child, the house on Pawleys came right into my hands. The old rockers, the creaking floorboards, the tongue-and-groove walls, the ancient kitchen and the claw-footed bathtubs were all mine. The only changes I made were to add a furnace, a fresh coat of paint, window boxes of flowers and new screens. Oh, and I did update the bathroom and kitchen fixtures but that had to be done—you know how salt corrodes everything in its path.
If you looked twice at my house you would scratch your head wondering why I loved it so much. Anyone with a developer's eye would want to knock it down and replace it with a home with central air-conditioning and heat and, probably, God forbid, wall-to-wall carpet, an in-wall vacuum system, doorbells and every other invention of the twentieth century. No thanks. I still preferred floors I could sweep, friends calling out to announce their arrival over the roar of the ocean, and I could not have cared less what mysterious wonders the damp air performed on my hair. Once I crossed over that causeway, leaving the mainland, the plantations and the Waccamaw River, the world ceased to exist.
On very hot nights I used the ceiling fan in my bedroom because I loved to hear the waves at night and the birds in the morning. And I loved the memories. If I closed my eyes, I could hear my mother's gentle voice, negotiating with Philemon, the creek man and an island institution during my childhood. He had a bucket of fresh flounder and another one of shrimp, and from them Momma would buy our dinner.
I could see us at the table, Daddy telling Momma how delicious the meal was. Later I would squeeze in between them on the porch swing, while Momma sang sweetly and I drifted off to my dreams. When you lose a parent at a young age, those few memories you have are more precious than any single ring or necklace left to you. Whenever I was here, even alone as I am now, I could stand where they once stood and somehow in the magical workings of the Pawleys Island salt air, I could bring them back to me. For that and for a thousand other reasons too, I would never sell this house or leave it for too long.
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