Living Vicariously through Isabelle


Door to Kitchen house where Izzy is staying until she finds her own apartment.

Outside her door.

A garden path.

I think this wall is part of the original carriage house.

The 19th Century palm that marks the center of the formal garden.

Neighbors.



As most of you know, Isabelle took a job in Charleston, South Carolina and I helped move her there in August. She has been staying courtesy of my dear, dear friends Frank and Tami McCann, two of the most generous and elegant people I know, in their uber-charming kitchen house which happens to have been dropped in a yummy 19th Century Charleston garden. (In the 18th and 19th Centuries, the kitchen house was separated from the main house because of the heat. When there were no stoves, cooking was done in the fireplace. As well, it was a fire hazard and could not be part of the main house.) So this is where Izzy is staying - an unimaginably delightful kitchen house. (There are remnants of the "carriage house" on the property, but it was earlier destroyed, apparently.) Tami's sumptuous garden is on tour this weekend - for the Charleston Fall House and Garden Tours. This is how GOOD the garden is!

Anyway, Izzy's job is going well and she is now looking for her own apartment. So in the last 24 hours, we've talked 4 times while she describes in detail what she is seeing. I am on pins and needles re-living those delicious early days in Charleston when I first moved there in 1978. She is MUCH smarter and more savvy than I was at that time! But, I am having flashbacks  - these crazy romantic memories of the smell of the sea, the moisture in the air, the simple pleasure and practicality of "y'all", the uncontested beauty of so much exquisite architecture in such a condensed space, the taste of shrimp just off the boats, the dripping Spanish moss, the gigantic white magnolia flower opening like a lotus. I miss it. I have missed it. Listening to Izzy with the addition of "y'all" to her vocabulary - I am butter - just melting to spend more time there again.

Got to figure this out. I do miss her, but she's doing great - it's really more about my own longing and memories.  So wonderful to have a link to that past. I think I need a little spot of my own in Charleston. Got to tell Lee.

Comments

  1. That's a great post Alecia, a little insight into the mother-daughter relationship, all tied together with memories and experiences of a place. Thanks

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