Dear Reader:

Chaucer gets credit today for this familiar quote but Sir Walter Scott alluded to it ( also) in several of his writings.

I grew up hearing adults around me use it on occasion and never gave it much thought since I didn’t get to the beach but on rare occasions since it was almost a full day’s drive to leave the Piedmont before the interstate was built and get to the coastal region of the state.

But when Brooke and I graduated from Erskine we were determined to both leave our upper regional rural small towns and find sunshine, oceans, and boys in Charleston! We accomplished all three eventually… forgetting sometimes we did have to stop and squeeze teaching in also!

After we both ” survived” that first teaching year… we were beyond excited! The beach, the ocean, the islands were calling that first summer. *** We put more miles on our old second/hand graduation cars ( daily hitting the beaches) than we had commuting to school each day.

Since neither of us knew anything about oceans, riptides, currents, undertow we chose the most dangerous spot between Sullivan’s Island and Isle of Palms to lay our blankets and picnic. -Breach Inlet.

Today you see signs like this … and swimming there is illegal …should have been back then too!

The only sign in the early 70’s was ” Swim at Your Own Risk” .. that did not even slow us down …much less deter us. We could swim… but our experience with swimming was public pools, ponds and lakes… not the ocean!

As crazy as we were back then … ( and we were) we successfully picnicked and swam for a couple of weeks at the inlet with no problem …until one day we spotted a sandbar and thought this little ” beach” in the ocean was so ” cute” and would be ideal to swim to and lay out in the sun -our own beach.

Just remembering how utterly ignorant we were that first summer living in Charleston makes me shudder typing this… once again all went well the first few times until we both fell asleep on the sandbar one afternoon and the encroaching ocean woke us up.

It was very puzzling… what had happened to our ” beach” ( mostly underwater) and why did the parking lot and inlet look so far away?

We were about to find out… we were swimming against the tide and getting nowhere… why weren’t we making progress? Talk about Divine Intervention… I finally realized that I could not swim another stroke … but remembered mother had taught me the backstroke and told me to use that stroke in an emergency and this was certainly one! ( Mother, with one hand, could back stroke and just simply float for enormous periods of time. )

I yelled to Brooke to flip on her back and try to rest so we could continue our attempt back to shore… when we flipped over God somehow managed to make us aware that if we swam parallel to the current we would eventually be able to head back towards shore… just farther down the beach.

That was the quietest trip back to West Ashley and our apartment there that afternoon… all I remember is literally falling in my bed (with my wet sandy bathing suit on ) because I did not have the energy to change!

The next morning I think that we said a blessing over soggy cereal thanking God for simply being alive.

So until tomorrow… God is not only the God of help and guidance during troubled times but the God of extreme kindness and patience … helping two ” Legal 21 year olds” stop ” illegally ” acting like idiots! ” Lesson learned!

Today is my favorite day-Winnie the Pooh

But in spite of trying to drown ourselves we did have fun and lots of adventures -the Bahamas for our senior break and fun trips with wonderful neighbors in our apartment complex that first couple of years living in Charleston -great memories!

Those were the days-so glad I had them! So glad I survived them!

The light was shining through my ” Clemson bottles this morning… go Tigers!