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tourbi
Age: 57 Zodiac: 
| Joined: 09 Jan 2008 |
| Posts: 2640 |
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Location: tourbiland, at the foot of Pikes Peak, USA
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 Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 3:57 pm |
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My Shining Star
Susan Allsbrook Darke
Barbra Streisand once sang, “Memories, light the corners of my mind.” Many of my happiest memories—as a child, a teenager, an adult—revolve around time spent at the beach. I grew up in North Carolina, home to some of the most beautiful beaches on the Atlantic Ocean.
I remember vividly the summer of 1969. My daughter, Tracey, was six weeks old, and we joined my parents and siblings at Moorehead City, NC. My daddy was horrified to see me “strutting” down the beach in a bikini, so soon after giving birth to his first grandchild! I often watch the old movies from that vacation—my favorite scene is the one of Daddy leaning up against the pier smoking his Salem cigarette. When I zoomed in on him, he looked right into the camera and, with a half-smile on his face, gave me that special wink—that only my daddy could give. He died four years later, at the incredibly young age of fifty-four. Years later Tracey put music to that old movie, and when Daddy appears on the screen, “Time in a Bottle” is playing. The tears rolling down my face feel like the tide rolling to the shore.
From then on, my husband and I took Tracey and our son, Stan, to the Outer Banks in North Carolina every summer. My younger brother, Rick, and his wife, Barbara, would often join us, and he and I would spend countless hours on the beach reliving our happy childhood memories.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996, and after numerous surgeries, we decided to buy our own home in the Outer Banks.
I work in a high-powered corporate environment and fight daily rush-hour traffic in the Washington, D.C., area, but when I cross the bridge into the Outer Banks, the stress rolling off my shoulders feels like the tide rolling out to sea.
Our beach house quickly became the family gathering spot for special occasions. My mom, who just passed away at age eighty-eight, had many precious times there, surrounded by her five children and their families. If laughter, music, and happiness could bring down a house, our beach house would have become a pile of lumber a long time ago! Daddy may not be there in body—but I know that when I look up in the sky at night, there is one very special star looking down on me, and “he” is giving me that same special wink. I am pretty sure that he has a constant smile on his face, particularly because now that I’m fifty-nine, those bikinis are history!
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