Someone else will enjoy all the things we love about the house: the sun coming in stripes through the blinds, reflecting off the pale bamboo floors; the 4 bathrooms, so each bedroom has it’s own bathroom.  The view of tree’s out all four sides of the house.   

It’s one thing that we can’t afford this house on our own, but it’s another, surprising blessing, the joy I get from sharing it with our renters.

Getting back to Tybee, settling in, we began to breath in the ambiance of rest.

Windows line the entire upstairs of our home, and on every side, we look out to trees. I love that we don’t stare into the wall of someones home. We bought this lot, from the lady behind us, who paid $1,000.00 dollars for it, 30 years ago. (Now that was a good investment.)

And we hoped the home would be sunny and light when it was finished, but one blessing we didn’t quite grasp was how wonderful it would be to look out our living room windows and see Elsie. That’s what I’ve named the giant 50 foot tall/60 foot wide, Live Oak tree in the lot across from our house. The tree literally takes up sixty feet of view out our top windows. I named her Elsie because she is like that old family cow I’ve read about in years gone by, which sustained the family through troubled times. Elsie sustains me. She is ever green, never loses her leaves, and stands so tall, and stready, she hardly sways in the wind. “One day…” she says to me, “one day you will be strong – and in the meantime borrow hope from my scope.” And I do.

My husband and I don’t have time or place to go for long walks together, except on Tybee. The whole island is just so conducive for walking. On Sunday, we walked down our street, Lovell, the half block to the end, and then up to 2nd ave. I love 2nd ave, it is tree lined. And I don’t mean small trees, I mean giant 100 year old tree’s with branches forming a canopy over the road. And it’s residential, all odd, old houses. OK, some of them are new. But, most of the houses look like what my friend calls, ‘crumbling down bungalows’. And they are painted lively colors of hot pink, and shocking blue, andsea foam green. We didn’t see one car for the hour walk. We came back around the back of the Island, near sunset. The most wonderful thing, on the south end of the Island, where we live,  is the fact that it’s just 1/2 mile wide.  A meandering walk, takes you from the Sunrise side, to the sunset side in minutes. The front of our end of the Island is lined by the beach and the back end is lined by miles and miles of marsh lands.

Before I moved to Tybee, or even Georgia – when we lived on the West Coast – (I used to pride myself on never having lived east of I-5) – and no one explained to me the beauty of the marsh lands, how the tall grasses turn color throughout the day. How they are brown at noon, pink at sunset and blue in early evening light.

When Tom and I got back from our walk on Sunday, we had begun to relax. To hope. To realize there are greater things than making the right investments, or losing lots of money. Or even having to rent your beach house because you can’t afford it. There are greater things in life.

We are grateful for Tybee Island. Grateful we can still come here, a least part time and enjoy.

And I love the sea. I love it in winter, when the ocean is tough and the waves loud. Loud enough to hear from our home on Tybee Island…on a cold January Morning.