Mary Eaton Williams, a long-time friend who now lives in Danville, wrote to me, "I have a true story that I think you will enjoy." She was right, and I pass it on in her words:
"Last fall, while at Holden Beach, [her daughter, Mary Freear Good] was finding shells like we have never found before. She usually does not have good luck shelling, but she never gives up. This time she came in with a beautiful scotch bonnet, a perfect sea urchin, and many more unusual shells. We jokingly told her that someone was walking on the beach with her and scattering the shells.
"We stopped laughing when on the last day she came in with a plain cockle shell, which she usually does not pick up. But for some reason that day she did, and when she turned it over, written in red were the words, 'God loves you.' Someone was truly walking with her."
A few weeks later, in August, I talked with Mary Freear, whom I've known since she was a teenager back in the early '70s. She said there were so many shells and such wonderful shells that she suspected her mother and her aunt Judy were salting the beach. In turn, they teased her that she was buying shells. But Mary Freear had her cousin Martha's witness that her finds were truly finds.
She went on, "I had a feeling God was letting me find my lifetime's worth of shells because I wouldn't be back there."
She said she has wanted to write a letter to the local paper to let the person who left the shell on the beach "know the difference this has made in my life."
Holden Beach is one of a string of long, narrow islands along the coast of Brunswick County, N.C., about midway between Wilmington and Myrtle Beach. The beach faces roughly south, with Long Beach to the east and Ocean Isle to the west. Over the years many hurricanes have come, parts of the island have eroded, new luxurious cottages with air conditioning and all mod cons have replaced many of the old ones whose windows admitted the salty sea wind. Still, it is a relatively quiet, relaxing seaside community.
My family first went to Holden Beach around 1970-we may have learned of it from the Williamses-and for a long time we continued to visit, staying a week or two. Now my children and grandchildren go regularly. Many people we knew from Lexington also went there. Driving along the beach road you could always spot several Lexington cars parked at the cottages. Mary Freear said that's still true.
The Williamses and friends have been going to Holden Beach for about 40 years, Mary Freear said. Most of those years they stayed in the same cottage, the Sand Box. Last year they stayed in the nearby Sugar Shack.
To Mary Freear, Holden Beach is "a connection to all the people who have gone before me and will come after me." Her father, Ben, their friend Buddy Evans. "You walk on the sand and think of all the people who have walked there with youÖIt's a holy place; there are still footprints there."
She added, "Sometimes being restored (as the beach does for people) requires a whole lot of us when we leave." Mary has been living with cancer since November, 2003. She and her husband, Don, still farm their place at Forkland, Ky., which she smilingly calls a suburb of Gravel Switch. This year they have sold flowers at the farmers' market in Danville.
Mary Freear said she is grateful that they are among the few people who get to live the life they hoped for. Living in their community, she said, "is like living on 'Walton's Mountain,'" referring to a popular TV series about a loving rural family; "it's really a community." In her first year of treatment she lost all her hair. Some of their neighbors, "crusty old farmers," shaved their heads.
"I've been the recipient of a whole lot of grace."