missing HHI

When I returned to school last fall, I missed Hilton Head every day. It was a hard transition, leaving a fantasy world and returning to the life I had left behind in May. This year, thankfully, it hasn't been as difficult with the constant flow of activities I've had. However, every now and then I do feel sadness similar to last fall. While perhaps it wasn't the best choice career wise to spend two summers on an island lifeguarding and renting umbrellas and chairs, those two summers have changed my life and impacted me more than anything else thus far. On our last couple of days in Hilton Head, Ali decided to read the book that's been in our bathroom for two summers now. It is called How to Live on an Island by Sandy Gingras. What we found in it applies perfectly.

"I think that there's no truer place than an island. An island stands only by some whim of fate, given a chancy foothold among the chaos. When I go to an island, I know that I'm in that state of grace in which anything can happen.

Living on an island often makes you change your perspective, your mind, and your direction too. With the tide coming in over the castles you build, currents sweeping you places you didn't plan on going, the mists rolling in mysteriously over what you thought was clear, you change a lot just to keep up.

Islands can be scary places, but their changeability makes them hopeful places too. Each day starts washed, swept, utterly different than the day before. The morning crackles like a never-turned page.

Where else in the world do we get a chance to step out into so much renewal? Where else do we keep getting second chances at ourselves?"

-Sandy Gingras