When I awoke this morning I was alone in the apartment.  The sun was shining brilliantly. Apparently the athletic member of the team had already begun his intended cycle about the Island as he had indicated last evening he would do. It was Christmas Day and I too was excited to begin another dreamy day on Hilton Head Island. But first the finial atop a bedside lamp needed attention. It was insecure. My amateur skills in matters mechanical proved of little if any advantage in the task at hand. After an unduly prolonged struggle I relented with only moderate improvement of the lamp.

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Christmas Eve in South Carolina is for me an unparalleled fortuity! The weather is glorious. We’ve been boostered. The apartment is in copybook order. And after having bicycled 18.99 Kms along North Forest Beach Drive then back upon the dazzling beach I am ready for our celebratory dinner this evening. Meanwhile Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker, Op. 71 performed by the Klassische Philharmonie (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany) and Principal Conductor Heribert Beissel soothe my appetite for improvement and relaxation.

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Catching the rays has forever been an unrepentant passion of mine.  I am as well shamefully inert to the perils of doing so. Yet another advantage of old age; viz., I’ve made it this far so something’s gonna get me! Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego I may as well feel the furnace glow to the end! In truth my current obsessiveness is no greater than that of the average golfer. Gone are the days of skimpy shorts and lathering the whole with olive oil.  Instead I now cultivate what I consider a proper and enviable social limitation of wearing clothes – granted a small deprivation for someone of my age and girth.  In fact I prefer not to see myself in the mirror after my shower in the morning. The only toxic feature of any current persuasion is strictly internal; that is, generally feeling good about life and relishing the analgesic influence of what’s on the bathroom counter.

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I am the first to proclaim that life owes me nothing. To my thinking life is a history of happy fortuity. This doesn’t mean I haven’t encountered obstacles; I certainly have. Yet by my calculation there have been but few times when I have faced manifest impediment or barrier which proved insurmountable or which didn’t somehow work itself out. It is not in my nature to quit; that is, not willingly and not entirely. When faced with an obstruction my immediate inclination is to seek to overcome it or to discover a solution which represents a meaningful compromise. However I am not one to lay blame at my own or another’s doorstep for failure. If after repeated efforts something isn’t working, and if there is seemingly no way around the problem, then it is time to abandon the project. And very often the decision I make to do so occurs precipitously; and, as often with unanticipated redirection and sometimes quite unexpected (though welcome) results. Such is the serendipity!

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It is easy to see why Christmas enlivens us so (and why we are soon saturated).  The razzmatazz aligns all the winning topics of universal sentimentality beginning with motherhood (itself spirited by virginity) set in a mystical pauper’s surrounding with which few of us have any acquaintance except perhaps through Charles Dickens’ prepossessing rendition of Bob Cratchit’s son Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. The immediate follow-up to this unimaginable start (if Kings on camels in the middle of the night trudging after a star were not enough) is a collection of exclusive accessories beyond anything at Bulgari – gold, frankincense (an aromatic resin used in incense and perfumes) and myrrh (another perfume or analgesic).

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There wasn’t frost on the windows when I awoke this morning but there was what I thought to be a disturbing amount of condensation. I accordingly set the windows partly ajar and turned up the heat in an effort to dry them out. The temperature had precipitously dropped overnight to a bracing 42°F and has been sustained there throughout most of the day with an expected high at 6:00 pm of only 50°F.  We’re not predicted to escape this refrigeration until next Saturday, Christmas Day (when highs return to 72°F) although the sunshine will be back bien en evidence on Wednesday next. Nonetheless it is suitably refreshing bearing in mind the inescapable Christmas theme. I too for example am insisting upon listening to whatever traditional Christmas music I can find in Mr. Apple’s library; and, I can tell you, the search thus far has proven highly successful! There’s everything from the customary choirs to a great deal more classical renditions (such as baroque Bach) than I had imagined. I confess that I occasionally interrupt the monotony of Christmas music with the likes of Smooth Classical Jazz just to keep things balanced. But not for long!

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Apart from housing guppies and Siamese fighting fish in an aquarium when I was unrecognizably young, I cannot recall having had a certifiable hobby.  Something, say, like stamp collecting or pottery making. Or, as one of my former acquaintances did, making fanciful and complex fishing flies. I considered the latter both then and now a brilliant leisure pursuit, certainly exotic, capturing as it does an uncommon aesthetic trait combined with the rustic image of a sole fisherman up to his waist in a burbling English stream. His father (himself an Englishman and a man of precision, a medical surgeon) practiced gardening with identical gusto and aplomb, creating enormous blooms of white summer flowers.

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We’re nearing the Winter Solstice, the onset of winter and the darkest day of the year, the day before things go over the top (or hit bottom) and start all over again.  Not everything though. We have to reckon with change. We go in one direction then suddenly alter both our orientation and our purpose. Nothing lasts forever.  Apart from old furniture, things just aren’t made that way; they’re intended from the start to fulfill a purpose, then die (at least metaphorically). It is a cooling off period to be sure.

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Perhaps because of a habit previously constructed here, or maybe we’ve just cultivated it since our return, we cycled again late this morning to Sea Shack on Executive Park Road for some serious down-home low-country cooking; viz., conch fritters, She-crab soup, blackened grouper and an assortment of variable sides like simple green salad (with an astonishingly clever Balsamic vinaigrette), Cole slaw (similarly unique and tasty), Hush Puppies (always satisfying though never entirely free of guilt), delicious homemade fries (ditto), collard greens and red rice.  Today is Saturday which for its own reasons continues to be a recurring weekend motive for singularity from the regular work week. We prefer to arrive at Sea Shack sharply at 11:00 am when it opens though today there was no line-up, just the same gang as last week sitting once again at one of the three outdoor picnic tables (the same one as last time).  We too sat outside but instead at one of the café style tables under an umbrella at the opposite end of the restaurant in view of the backyard dumpsters (which added the further ingredient of commonalty to an otherwise superb dining experience).

The Sea Shack

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With Christmas Eve precisely one week away, the children and grandchildren have begun to arrive on the Island for what I expect will be a week or ten days of holiday from work and school. The weather today was ideal beach weather; viz., sunny and 73 degrees with a light southerly breeze. There were young children adventurously wading into the sea at low tide approaching 1:30 pm this afternoon.

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