Parting - Sea Oats

I have this nautical powder room in my house.  It sort of developed by accident.  When we bought our house this room had fishing lure wallpaper.  Yes, go head, imagine.  But of course it was low on the priority list of upgrades that "new" houses usually need.  Then on a summer trip back to Florida, we sisters spent a day in Mt. Dora and I found a vintage, humble, homemade mirror surrounded in seashells, the entire thing backed with a piece of someone's leftover wall panelling, the worst kind.  It was perfect I decided, to detract the lures.  And so inspiration was born and almost 20 years later the wallpaper remains but it is covered with anything I could find that was nautically relevant and only the most observant visitor even notices the fishing lures.  SHE has made many contributions to the collection on these walls, most of them vintage.

My first thought however when I really studied this likeness of sea oats was that it should go to my friend Fran.  They just finished building a beachfront home on the Mississippi coast to replace the one that blew away with Katrina, the view from the front porch is a sea oats covered shore. And yet I was pulled somehow to keep it.  There isn't much wall space left in the powder room really but it would fit, I loved the beach as SHE did.  When I looked at it there were many memories of long ago days SHE and I spent at Daytona and New Smyrna.  Anyone remember the ice cream man who drove the jeep with deer antlers mounted on the hood?  Her rusted beach chair, sadly, had to be departed....left on her back porch the last year or so and open to the elements it was beyond recovery.

Fran called, lets have breakfast.  It had been a good while since I had free time to spend with anyone, life speeds up, hard to slow down and as one friend reminds me - stop and smell the Live Oaks.  Hearing her voice I knew the sea oats were for her.

So we met for breakfast on Magazine Street early.  We caught up on each others lives, compared losses, worries, frustrations, joys, laughter and hugs only as women do.  We walked to our cars and I offered this gift from my sister to her.  You can always tell the truth by watching someone's face.  Fran was two hundred percent delighted.  I felt guilt for ever wanting to keep it.  We looked closer as Fran was curious as to who the artist was.  In the right hand corner it had been signed by an artist from Tampa - Fran Hancock.  For a second Fran was speechless.....I live in Hancock County she said, its a sign!

So, the sea oats painted by Fran Hancock went to Fran who lives in Hancock County.