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There is frost on the ground this morning. A rare occasion this winter during which I’ve kept two of my three winter coats shrouded in dry cleaner bags. Had I not come outside to toss some shriveled grapes, an offering to whatever rabbit or deer is brave enough or hungry enough to venture into the open to scavenge, I may not have noticed. But I do notice, tip-toeing across the dead grass covered in frozen dew. Watching my steps I see glistening shards of ice, each one a prism throwing a single blade of grass into relief, each one clear and vivid, even in pre-sunrise light. And it is not just the grass. Everything has crisper edges – the patches of bark on the sycamore tree, the curve of the empty shepherd’s hook at the corner of the deck, the line of the roof against the flat sky. Across the way, behind the grain bins and the trees that mark the property line to the southeast, the sunrise is usually a wild smear of red and orange and pink – like lipstick on a toddler – and the pine trees silhouetted by the sun are just one single smudge of charcoal. This morning, though, the branches of the trees fall across the sky like black lace, every knot and stitch visible, bumpy like Braille or a box grater. Everything has clean lines. Everything is in sharp focus. Everywhere I look there is increased depth of field. It is as though I have just opened my eyes, as though I have walked into a church for the first time. Which feels odd since to frost something means to cover it or make it less visible, not moreso. At some point in elementary school I must have learned what causes frost. Maybe it was Mrs. Blitch in third grade or Mrs. Curlin in fourth. Surely one of them had something to say about it, but right now the only frost I can remember is Robert. That Frost – the one with the large nose and bushy eyebrows – also made things clearer. Using ordinary language, infused with irony and ambiguity, he sharpened the vision of anyone who read his poems. He wrote what he saw, what he heard, what he tasted and smelled and felt, using words so crisp, so concentrated as to make it impossible to thereafter look at a calf, a buzz-saw, a snowy field the same way ever again. That Frost, the one whose road less traveled emboldened me, more times than I can count, to do the unexpected thing, make the different choice, follow the narrower road. The Frost whose definition of home reminded me, more times than I can remember, that I would never be without a place to go. The Frost whose neighbors, more clearly than any policy debate, enlightened me to the fact that “something there is that doesn't love a wall.” That Frost, like this morning’s frost, opened my eyes. That’s what poetry does. I don’t remember Daddy ever reading to my brother and me, with the notable exception of the Bible, but I do remember, with clarity and joy, his reciting poetry. I can still hear him, his deep voice pouring out like cane syrup – thick and sweet: “O young Lochinvar is come out of the west, Through all the wide border his steed was the best; And save his good broadsword he weapons had none, He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.” Sometimes he entertained us with “Paul Revere’s Ride,” but most of the time it was Lochinvar, faithful in love and dauntless in war. And always it was the words and their power. It still is. Copyright 2019

January 1. 01/01. A day written in binary code. Grannie always said that whatever you do on New Year’s Day you’ll be doing all year. In the event that her superstition was somehow based in fact and just in case its power can be conjured, I am walking. And reading. And cooking. But mostly walking. Earlier, before the pots of black-eyed peas and rice and tomatoes set themselves to simmering, there was a long trek to the beaver pond and back – three miles spotted with tread-shaped puddles and edged with rivulets just deep enough to splash under the tap dance of Owen’s paws. Not a single car or truck passed us. Not a single rabbit or squirrel made a dash into the underbrush at our approach. Not a single interruption. It is afternoon now. The sky is losing its earlier sheen, fading from silver to pewter. From the back door I head to edge of the yard, where heavy rains have left jagged slashes in the dirt, and start uphill across the field that, until last week, was spiked with empty cotton stalks. The road is a fine place to walk, but these empty acres are better. Ahead of me Owen has caught scent of a deer and is streaking through the woods that run along the property line. He reappears beside me, tongue lolling to the side of his mouth and caramel-colored eyes gleaming. He is so glad to have me back. It has been weeks since we have done this, Owen and I. Weeks since we walked without purpose or destination. Weeks since feet and paws ambled, rambled, roved. The earth feels solid and sure beneath me, the first time in a long time that anything has. I am reminded of the theologian Paul Tillich’s phrase “the ground of being.” I think I might be beginning to understand it. At the top of the hill we turn around. Start back. Repeat ourselves, but in reverse. I was never one for resolutions, but for a few years I made a point of adopting an aspirational word as the fulcrum upon which to move through the weeks and months. Flexibility. Spontaneity. Serendipity. Rolling them around in my mouth now I realize that they were, they are young words. Words for people whose eyesight is still sharp, whose jawlines are still straight, whose skin is still taut. If I was going to choose a word for this year – And I don’t know that I will. – it would have to be something like resilience. Or endurance. Or courage. A word hefty with appreciation of all that has come before and prescience of all that lies ahead. A word that throbs with the hard truth that one day will be the last day. Owen beats me home. He runs wildly from one corner of the yard to the other, surveying the place as though he’s never been there before. As though he didn’t dig the holes or drag up the deer bones or destroy the croton plant. His word for 2019 is, obviously, abandon. I watch him whirl and leap and pounce and wonder if, perhaps, we could share. If abandon might be my word, too. If, while he is cavorting through his days without restraint, I might be giving up, laying aside, handing over to better stewards that which no longer serves me. If I might match his recklessness with some of my own, walking away from one thing so that I might walk toward another. I go in through the front door leaving Owen to chase something I can not see. The first day of the new year is waning. I walked. I read. I cooked. But mostly I walked. And, oh, how I hope Grannie was right. Copyright 2019

This town. Every morning I drive toward it and watch it appear in the fold of the sky, at the edge of the horizon. Spread from the center like spilled milk, it reaches out to greet me, its permeable edge drawing me in. This town is my town. I was born, taught, and preached to in one after another of its red brick buildings. Under its pines and magnolias, its humid skies, its drawling voices I learned to breathe, to read, to believe. This town is the answer to the question I’ve been asked a thousand times. Where are you from? A simple inquiry made heavy by the weight of a stranded preposition. On this morning, a few days before Christmas, I am asking myself that question. Where am I from? Not what point of geography do I call my provenance, but what is my source. While I read the newspaper, check phone messages, review my calendar, my mind wanders. I remember, with the perspective of an adult, what it was like to grow up here. This was the town where strangers called tourists were always allowed to merge into traffic and given a smile and a wave. This was the town where families named Minkovitz and Seligman and Rudderman operated stores where my family and I happily shopped for Buster Brown shoes and Villager skirts. This was the town that desegregated its public schools without any of the violence that was broadcast into our homes from other towns on the evening news, even as its Confederate monument stood silently on the courthouse square. The last memory comes into sharper focus. It is the first day of desegregation. I am in fifth grade at Mattie Lively. Neither I nor any of my classmates know what to expect. Our teacher, Julia Trapnell, her shirtwaist dress starch-pressed and trim, opens the classroom room door and a girl, a black girl, walks in. “Children,” Mrs. Trapnell says, “this is Kathy Love. She is going to be in our class.” No one says anything. “Kathy.” It is clear Mrs. Trapnell is speaking to me, not the new girl. “I’d like for you to sit at the table in the back with the new Kathy while she gets adjusted.” I pick up my books and silently move to rear of the room, waiting for Kathy Love to join me. I look out the window, the window of my office that, when I was in fifth grade, would have been the storeroom of the Buggy and Wagon building, and I try to remember more about that day, the day 10-year-old Kathy Love, all on her own, changed this town. But I can’t. What I can remember, though, is a day about a year ago. I’d been invited to speak to the local Board of Realtors. We ate civic club lunch food and then I was introduced by my friend the program chairman and then I spoke for the allotted 15 to 20 minutes about writing and words and power. When I was done, lots of kind people – some of whom I knew, some of whom I didn’t – came up to shake my hand and tell me thank you. One of those people was a young black man – tall and lean, with an easy smile. He offered his hand with an enthusiasm that made me know he had found the right profession. “I am Reginald Love,” he offered. “Are you from here?” I asked. “I went to school with some Loves.” And, upon hearing that he was, in fact, a Bulloch County Love, I proceeded for some inexplicable reason to tell him the story, the story of the day I met Kathy Love. By the time I finished his smile had transformed to a grin. “I’ve heard that story,” he said. “My family tells it, the story that Kathy was given a helper, a friend.” I gasped, gripped his hand in both my own while tears welled in my eyes. “Thank you,” I offered. They were the only words worth saying. Every town has its stories, stories that rise from its people and then fall back down like rain upon their shoulders to bring forth more. It is important to tell them. Where am I from? I am from this town. This town is my town. This town is me. Copyright 2018

And, suddenly, the sawtooth oak is gold, dripping with leaves heavy with three days’ rain. Leaves that somehow manage to shimmer in the infinitesimal amount of light coming through the clouds. Leaves that point like fingers toward the ground to which they are falling even before they let go. But, of course, there is nothing sudden about it. For weeks the chlorophyll has been dying, Camille-like – fading slowly, sighing imperceptibly. Way before Thanksgiving the annual carpeting of the back yard with leaves I have no intention of raking began, the soft crinkle under the sound of the car’s tires reminding me of the cellophane twisted around peppermint. Way before the time change and the nightly deer rodeo in the driveway and the irritation with which I took off the dry cleaner’s plastic from my winter coat, the leaves were changing. There was a time when I would have attributed the sensation of suddenness – Suddenly the tree is gold! – with my failure to notice, to observe, to pay attention. I would have chided, scolded, berated myself – out loud and in the presence of the tree – for all manner of human shortcoming. By the time I was done I’d have made a good case that I was responsible for everything from the egg that rolled out of the nest in the mailbox to the Braves’ ouster from the playoffs to climate change. There was that time, but it is not now. Because now, after living enough years and experiencing enough suddenlys, I understand that the sensation of suddenness has less to do with the event itself and more to do with the emotion felt in response to it. Every mother knows that her infant son will eventually be 16 and driving trucks and going on dates and every mother, despite her promises to herself and her equally evolved friends, eventually posts on Facebook: “Cherish every moment. In the blink of an eye, they’ll be gone.” Suddenly. Every single Bulldawg fan who entered Mercedes-Benz stadium last Saturday afternoon knew that college football games last about three hours, give or take an injury time-out or two. And every single Bulldawg fan, as the clock ran down, gasped in disappointment that the magical season was over. Suddenly. The next day is Sunday. Somewhere around 10 o’clock I stumble into the kitchen, my bare feet feeling both the smoothness and the coldness of the wood floor. I have been sick all week, knew the night before that I’d not make it to church, had set no alarm in the hope that extra sleep might make me well. It didn’t. It still feels as though someone has stuffed an Army blanket inside my head. I squint my eyes against the light that comes through the big bay window and – suddenly – realize what day it is. The first Sunday of Advent. Like the leaves, there is nothing sudden about its arrival. For months we have moved through the church calendar – Lent then Easter then Pentecost then Ordinary Time – on the way to these four quick weeks before Christmas. It is suddenly the first Sunday in Advent only because of the feelings it elicits: Frustration at the absence of a tree and no idea when or if one will get put up. Wistfulness over the passage of another year in which things done and undone did not match up to my to-do list. Fatigue with the illness that simply will not go away. I will, at least, I tell myself, get out the Advent wreath. It takes a while to find the candles where I put them last year. They slide out of the box, little spears of wax breaking off the sides, onto the table where the wreath with its four perfect holes awaits. One by one I set them in, straight and tall and fragile and it is only as the last one takes its place that I remember. The first candle, the one we light today, is the candle of hope. Hope that kept a people alive for thousands of years of enslavement. Hope that changed the world forever from a barn in Bethlehem. Hope that exists today even in frustration and wistfulness and fatigue. I stare at the unlit candle, its wick dark and curved, and – suddenly – it is Christmas. Copyright 2018

There are no easy harvests. There are good harvests, occasionally even bountiful harvests, and disappointing harvests. There are harvests that translate into profit and those that evaporate into losses so large that only a fool would ever harrow another field, plant another seed. There are long harvests, short harvests, early harvests, and late harvests, but there are no easy harvests. I am reminded of this truth as the rain beats the roof and the windows of my house like artillery shells. On three sides I am neighbored by picked-over cotton fields, the skinny stalks naked but for the occasional misshapen boll that somehow avoided the maul of the cotton picker rumbling over it weeks before. If these fields were all there were, their emptiness would be comforting, a soothing reminder of the cycle of the seasons, but a few miles away there are other fields, still full, still waiting. And it just keeps raining. The rain, though, it must be said, hasn’t been the only thing delaying the gathering of a crop that, at its peak, brought out the hopefulness in my family’s farmers. First, it was the hurricane that blustered its way across Georgia, arriving at these fields with enough residual wind to rip the bolls from the grip of the stiff brown calyxes that held them like cupped palms. Then it was equipment problems: bad bearings, worn spindle bushings. And now it is the rain. Once it stops – whenever that is – it may take a week or more for the land to dry out enough to hold up the 70,000-pound cotton picker. There are no easy harvests. In 1979 Hurricane David arrived just at the moment the corn was ready to be picked. Acres of tall earth-colored shocks were flattened. We, all of us, spent days walking down each row, lifting each stalk, breaking off each fully-matured ear of corn that would have been wasted had we not, and tossing all of them into piles that we would later transfer to the bed of the worn-out pick-up truck I had driven as a senior in high school. When all the stalks had been picked clean like roadkill, we stood in front of the combine, its header raised like big yellow teeth opened around a gaping mouth where gears ground so loudly that the diesel motor, usually deafening, was little more than a hum. One by one we tossed the ears into the darkness, underhand like pitching a softball. One by one the ears disappeared and then reappeared, stripped of the hard gold kernels, out the other end as though the combine was defecating. High above us, the kernels poured into the hopper and slowly, slowly, slowly the piles that we had made, the fruits of the labors not just of our post-hurricane days, but of all the days since the first bright green sprouts had split the crusty earth, grew smaller and smaller until there was nothing left to throw. There are no easy harvests. Somewhere along the way we got the idea that reaping was easier than sowing. That once the seed was planted, the idea expressed, the introductions made, all the hard work was over. We forgot or simply dismissed the idea that in every attempt to build, to create, to discover there must be toil. In every effort toward growth there will be opposition. We denigrate ourselves and all who have come before us when we focus our attention on eliminating the struggle. There are no easy harvests. Copyright 2018

I have often proclaimed, with only a bit of sarcasm, that I can drive to Macon in my sleep or, in the alternative, that my car can get there without any assistance on my part. I’ve been driving that westward trek on a regular basis since I was 17 years old, since before I-16 was completed, since the route included downtown Soperton. I, like anyone who has ever driven it more than once, have complained about the boredom, the soporific monotony of one hundred miles of straight flatness, made worse by the recent barbarous removal of pine trees from the median. However, that sameness has often been a blessing on days when my overloaded brain and/or my exhausted heart was incapable of the advanced thinking required by curves and turns, crests and hills. On those days, the rhythmic thumping of tires on concrete, the motionlessness of my wrist dangling over the top of the steering wheel, the stillness inside the steel cage into which I have buckled myself have been not an irritant, but a balm. Over the last few months a monumental construction project at the confluence of I-16 and I-75 has demanded a great deal more attention than that intersection has required in the previous 44 years during which I have navigated its knot. Signs and flashing lights and orange and white barrels have been clustered together into a rat’s nest of caution and warning. As a result, when I drove to Macon last week for a meeting, I made my way over the Ocmulgee River not with one hand dangling like a duchess awaiting a courtier’s kiss, but with both fists gripping the steering wheel like an action hero holding on to the ledge of a skyscraper with nothing but 20 stories of air between her and the pavement. That night, after the meeting, I had dinner with a friend in a quiet restaurant with small tables, dim lights, and servers who move with admirable stealth to remove and replace china and silverware. Words come easy in such a place. Boundaries that might otherwise be walls morph into permeable membranes so that stories can flow back and forth. And, though there is nothing linear about them, the stories all make sense. At some point, one of us must have brought up the drive each had made to get there and the drive each would have to make to get back home. Mention was made of the hazards of night driving – detours, car trouble, and kamikaze deer – and my friend’s dislike of driving after dark. She would, she told me, stay the night in Macon. I would, I told her, go on home. We talked about a lot of things at that table in that restaurant. Big things. Important things. But in the days that followed the one thing that kept coming back to me was the idea of detours. It’s bad enough, I thought, when the detour is a literal one – a blockade across the road with a big red arrow pointing in a direction you had no intention of going – , but it is far worse when it is the other kind. The loss of a job, a relationship, or a purpose. In those cases there is no GPS or Waze to quell the disorientation or offer the security of someone else’s prior experience. When that which gives you your sense of identity walks out the door or sends you walking, there is nothing that will make you feel anything other than lost. I’ve been lost. More than once. I have come up on detours so suddenly that I had no time to hit the brakes, but, instead, crashed head-on into the barrier where I had to sit, alone and scared, until my wits returned and I remembered that there is a gear called reverse. From those experiences and the nagging replay of that restaurant conversation, this is what I’ve figured out: The purpose of the detour is to protect you from something you can’t see, from the danger from which you would not have been able to protect yourself. And, though it may delay the journey, if you follow the signs you will always make it to your original destination. Preferably with unclenched fists. Copyright 2018

Ossabaw. Say it out loud. It will start with a rumble at the back of your throat, a rumble that reminds you of when you sat in front of your grandmother's oscillating fan and ah-ed into its blades for as long as your breath would allow. It will slip into the cave of your mouth where the air slides through your teeth with a hiss like a tire going flat. It will end with a burst, your lips separating abruptly as the whole word escapes into the universe, lifting and floating, dipping and diving like an osprey over the waves. Ossabaw. Live oaks dripping Spanish moss, vines as thick as a man's arms winding like cobras up the trunks of loblolly pines, garden statuary hidden under green grown thick and high. The mansion, majestic even in its decay, doors thrown open to catch the breeze off the marsh and to welcome the guests who move slowly, reverently through its rooms. In its quiet and somberness it exudes a different kind of magic. I am here, in this place cordoned off from the rest of the world, through the generosity of a friend. I want to sit silently on the trunk of one of the fallen trees and stare out at the marsh, flashing gold in the autumn sun, and simultaneously walk as fast as I can down every dirt road and trail and hallway I can find, breathing in the stories that I am sure are lingering in every crevice. When it is time to eat, time for roast pig and cheese grits and sweet tea, we sit at big round tables scattered across the front yard. I pull a journal out of my backpack to take notes, to scribble down the things I do not want to forget. We, all and each of us guests, came over by boat, the only way to get to Ossabaw. There is no bridge, no airfield, no helipad. I stood at the bow of the powerboat, beside Captain Joe, and watched the water split in front of us, rolling back like a liquid zipper. Three or four times we passed other boats going in the opposite direction and each time Joe pulled back on the throttle and turned the boat just slightly so as to meet the other boat's wake at an angle. I write that down and stop mid-sentence. It is a metaphor for something. I don’t know what yet. Hours later, sated with roast pig and cheese grits and sweet tea, I am back on that same boat, leaving in my own wake the Sicilian donkeys, the Peter Pan Garden, the tabby houses, the catalysts for what I can tell already is a difference I will feel for a long time before I name it. Dark clouds are advancing quickly; Captain Joe makes a quick announcement: "Hold on. It's going to be choppy." And it is. Standing at the bow again, I can see that he never pulls back on the throttle. He never turns into any of the choppy waves that keep us company all the way back to the marina on the mainland. He drives us straight ahead and into the waves. We beat the rain by about five minutes. It is days later that I figure it out. The metaphor. It is not nature of which we must be afraid. Not dark clouds or rain or waves created by either. It is people and their machines and the wake they leave behind. Whether it is magical Ossabaw or the hurricane-ravaged panhandle of Florida or my own heart, it can withstand the seasons, the tides, the storms. But none of them is immune to the malicious act, the intentional injury, the conscious neglect of human beings. If we are to be stewards, then, whether on behalf of ourselves or the people and places we treasure, we must learn when to pull back on the throttle, when to turn into the wave. Copyright 2018

It is Friday afternoon. It has been a long week. What am I doing at Walmart? I push the buggy purposefully. The object of my quest is a car phone charger. I stop in front of a section marked “Android phone accessories” where all of the items displayed appear to be for iPhones. Utilizing my superior deductive capabilities, I move to the section marked “iPhone accessories” to find that, as I suspected, all of these items are for Androids. There are, however, no chargers. I circle back to the check-out, where one Walmart employee is engaged in making a laborious return of some kind and a second is held captive by the flirtatious conversation of a middle-aged customer in cut-off jeans. I wait. A third employee materializes and walks right past me toward a couple who are browsing the no-contract cell phone display. “Can I help you?” she asks them. “Yeh,” the female customer laughs, “if you can show us a cheap one!” This could, it is clear, take a while. I take a couple of steps toward them. “Excuse me.” I lean into the huddle the three of them have made. “I hate to interrupt, but could you just tell me where car chargers are?” With a finger-point from the employee and an assurance that “That’s all right, honey; we ain’t in no hurry,” from the customer, I resume my single-minded pursuit. About halfway to the rack to which I’ve been directed, two young women step out in front of me, not quite blocking my path, but making it clear that they want me to stop. “Are you a teacher?” the blonde one asks. “A principal?” I see where this is going. They think they recognize me. They have seen my photo in the newspaper or, maybe, they’ve seen me in court and just can’t place me. “I’m a prosecuting attorney.” They look at each other, smile broadly, and nod, confirming something, but I’m not sure what. “We were watching you and you’re so ...” She pauses to find a word. “Powerful.” I nearly burst out laughing. “We could tell that you’re somebody who is ...” She stops. She is suddenly embarrassed. So am I. None of us knows what to do next. “Can I ask you something?” The other one, petite and with the intense gaze of the dangerously naive, steps closer and begins to tell me, in words falling over each other like puppies in a kennel, of her current legal troubles. Nothing awful. What my colleagues and I call misdemeanor stupidity. With the last embarrassing detail shared, she gazes up at me hopefully. I am, I suddenly realize, so much taller than she. “I’m really sorry,” I tell her, “but I can’t give you legal advice.” She looks confused. She thought I was powerful. She thought I could fix her problem or, at least, make it less of one. Unfortunately, the illusion of power is just that. An illusion. Regardless of what they saw when they looked at me, I can’t fix things, I can’t change what happened, I can’t save people. It is not a matter of effort or expertise, knowledge or skill-set, tools or timing. It is a matter of identity. And I am not a savior. The blonde reaches out to pull her friend gently away and says to me, “It’s okay. Really.” Then, to her friend, “I didn’t think she could help, but she listened. She listened all the way through.” They back away, smiling and waving in the disarming way of people who don’t know they have created an awkward situation, smiling and waving like grade-schoolers off on a great adventure, smiling and waving as though this was just an ordinary Walmart encounter between neighbors or school chums, as though it was not a hinge in the cosmos, a point on which something important bent at a new angle. I am still for what feels like a very long time. I wonder if maybe it’s not that power is an illusion, but that it is just far more subtle in its manifestation than we realize. I wonder if maybe we are all far more powerful than we’ve ever imagined. I wonder if maybe taking time, paying attention, listening might be what fixes things, what changes things, what saves people. It is Friday afternoon. What am I doing at Walmart? I am listening. I am listening all the way through.. Copyright 2018

On February 7, 2018, USA Today predicted that the Atlanta Braves would finish in third place in the National League East. Even the hometown Journal-Constitution predicted no better than a tie for third place, forecasting a 76-86 record. There were a lot of people who didn’t have much hope. A few months ago at the quarterly meeting of the Georgia Humanities Council, I heard about the recent completion of the Georgia’s Footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Trail. One of the stops on the trail is the bronze statute of Dr. King unveiled on the grounds of the State Capitol in August, 2017. Also on the Trail is the First African Baptist Church in Dublin. It was there that a 15-year-old Martin King gave his first public speech as the winner of the Colored Elks Club of Georgia oratory contest. The speech was titled “The Negro and the Constitution.” After delivering that speech, on the trip back to Atlanta, he was – for the first time – asked to relinquish his seat to a white passenger and step to the back of the bus. I was sitting that morning next to Ira Jackson. He is tall and lean and could be mistaken for a baseball player. He has a James Earl Jones-type voice. At the end of the report on the Trail, Ira sat back in his chair, stretched out his long legs and began to speak. “When I was growing up in Atlanta,” he said, “and I walked downtown, across the square of the State Capitol, I walked under the shadow of the statues of those other men,” ... he paused. “I could not imagine that the day would come when Dr. King would be among them. Hope,” he said is his soft, deep voice, “is hard.” I felt my breath catch in my throat and I knew he was right. But I wasn’t sure why. Over the following weeks the phrase kept rolling over and over in my mind as I tried to figure out what it meant. Every time I heard someone say, “I hope this meeting doesn’t last long,” or “I hope it doesn’t rain for the party.” That is the kind of hope, I decided, that gets relegated to wishing and longing, no more useful than letters to Santa Claus. But hope is supposed to be more than that. It is, in New Testament terms, an anchor for the soul, the tangible thing that holds the vessel steady in the calm and propels it through the storm. Hope isn’t bound by the past or by predictions. On March 29, 2018, opening day, the Atlanta Braves began the season with a 25-man roster and hope. And a lot of unexpected things happened over the next six months. Like a 20-year-old rookie hitting lead-off homers in five straight games. Like a veteran player in his 13th season making his first All-Star team. Like a pitcher coming back after 3½ Tommy John surgeries. And on September 22, 2018, with eight games still to play, the Atlanta Braves clinched the pennant. I don’t know if Ira Jackson was watching that game. I was. And I couldn’t help thinking that the 2018 Braves and the fight for racial equality have something in common, as do every other thought, activity, and endeavor of the human experience. They have in common the undeniable truth that hope is hard, but it is equally hard to resist. Invisible statues become tangible and underdog teams become champions when someone is willing to hope. Copyright 2018

The clouds are thick and dark and close enough to the ground that a crane, I think, could reach the plug that holds all the water inside. I am hoping that the center holds until I get home, but I have driven this stretch of Highway 301 enough times – thousands of times – to know that somewhere between Jimps and the intersection with Highway 46 that plug will pop. I am paying more attention that I might ordinarily because, of course, Hurricane Florence is bearing down on the east coast and because, of course, today – Tuesday – is the first anniversary of the arrival of Hurricane Irma in southeast Georgia. In just a couple of weeks, the second anniversary of Hurricane Matthew will be upon us. Who wouldn’t be watching the sky? In the distance there is a rumbling that could be thunder or could be the massive trucks that are my multiple and constant companions on this highway that I remember as a two-lane blacktop and that Daddy is quick to remind me he remembers as a dirt road. Keeping my eyes on my lane I try to sneak a look at the dashboard to see if the headlights have come on. Suddenly, just to the right, behind a convenience store that looks as though it may have already lost power, a bolt of lightning throws itself toward the ground like the spear of the gods the Greeks thought it was. Before I can start counting the lapse of time between lightning and thunder, the thunder itself fills the car. Like the radio bass turned up too loud. “Wow!” The exclamation is involuntary. “That was close.” And, then, before I can release my caught breath, I smell it. The lightning. Like electrical sparks. I have never smelled lightning before. Never – I guess – been quite this close, but somehow I know exactly what it is. I will look it up later, just to be sure, but I don’t need to. I know. The rain starts. I drive through it. By the time I get home it has stopped, but the clouds are still hovering, still pendulous. Still humming with the threat of bad weather. And I can’t resist going outside to walk around in it. Owen and I circle the yard over and over, brave enough to taunt the clouds, but not so imprudent as to get too far from cover. If there is any punctuation mark to my days it is this – walking the perimeter of Sandhill and watching the sky change from day to night. There isn’t another human being for at least half a mile. My view of the sunset is impeded only by treetops and I keep track of the movement of the earth through the seasons by finding which tree is the last one to hold a glimmer of light before the sun is completely gone. Tonight, the smell of lightning still in my head, I can see only a thin strip of bright burgundy. The clouds are blocking the rest of the light show – bright pink, glowing peach, gleaming orange. I can’t see them, but they are there. I know. I am struck at that moment, by two things. The first is that there is great value in knowing. The colors of the sunset, through every season, in every shade of the spectrum, I know from careful, attentive, consistent observation. That observation creates recognition and recognition creates appreciation and appreciation creates love. The second thing is that there is also great value in the discovery of something new to know. The smell of lightning is now a part of my experience, my history, my story because of presence. Presence leads to awareness and awareness leads to appreciation and appreciation, as I said, results leads to love. If, then, what the world needs now is more love, I think we could start with more knowing. The kind that comes from observation and presence, the kind that comes from deep breaths and stillness, the kind that comes from smelling lightning. Copyright 2018

The rain lasted long enough to move the sky from dusk to hard dark, to leave the grass glistening, to flatten the ant hills out by the mailbox. Long enough for me to notice when the sound reduced itself to the monotonic drip drip drip from the eaves and the cones streaming from the floodlights on the corners of the house went from pale and thick to bright and golden. Just long enough to make the night an invitation. I accepted. The toad on the front steps hurried away into the shadows as my footsteps approached. Straight toward the road I headed, making a sharp right at just the point where the grass meets the dirt. I followed the edges of the yard, around and around and around – along the field road to the branch, down the row of trees to the shed, then back toward the road along rows of peanuts slurping in the just-fallen rain. My steps grew more confident as my eyes adjusted, better able to avoid the ridges left by tractor tires, the holes left by armadillos. I could make out the faintest glow of the moon, shrouded by deep shadows. As I got closer to the back corner of the house I could suddenly smell the strong, piquant scent of rosemary and the equally strong, but sweeter scent of Russian sage. I came up short and stopped, took a deep breath and wondered if the rain had somehow released the scents, if the still-heavy humidity was concentrating them into this small spot. I walked until the wet seeped through my tennis shoes, through my socks, until I could feel my toes beginning to shrivel. I didn’t want to go inside. I wanted to keep walking in the dark. At my desk, taking one last look at the incessant stream of information that technology affords, I noticed an Instagram post from Brene’ Brown, a researcher and author whose work on shame and resilience, being vulnerable and showing up has had a significant impact on the way I look at the world and myself. Brene’ (because I think of her as a friend) lives in Houston and is right in the middle of the loss and displacement and fear and uncertainty gifted southeast Texas by Hurricane Harvey and her post, a video made at the NRG Center, showed us a woman who wasn’t trying to hide any of it. Her hair was spiky and she was wearing no makeup. This is what she said: “Everyone has been asking what you can do to help. I’m going to ask you for what we really need because this is not a community that needs anything to be pretty or wrapped in a bow. We need underwear.” Then she gave people the link to Amazon where they, where I could buy underwear, clean, fresh-smelling, never worn underwear for the people of Houston. So I clicked and clicked and clicked. And I filled my Amazon cart with underwear and I clicked one more time to send them on their way. And then I went to my Facebook page and I wrote a post about praying for Houston, but not being satisfied with just praying. And I wrote about Brene’ Brown and being the person in the arena and I shared the link and I asked my friends to buy underwear. And they did. Within minutes, the responses to my post started showing up. People buying underwear for people they do not know, will never meet. People whose age, race, and religion are irrelevant. I couldn’t help crying. In the strangest form of alchemy I’d ever seen, I watched as the compassion of my friends, my family, my people transformed into action, their prayers turned into underwear. In the midst of flood and deepest darkness, mercy manifested itself like the scent of rosemary and Russian sage rising through the night.

Owen barks, one short squeak like a rusty screen door. As I walk through the kitchen to let him out, I notice the difference. The morning light has become, overnight, duller. Weaker. Grayer. It slants at a distinctly different angle, throwing shadows that make long stripes across the table. Having ignored all the signs of summer moving toward an end – the change of frothy pink cotton blossoms into dense white bolls, the crunch of the first fallen sycamore leaves beneath my feet in the backyard, the burst of magenta ball bearings from the stems of the beautyberry bush – , this one catches me off-guard. I sigh a petulant sigh. It is not that I don’t appreciate the ability to walk outside without my sunglasses fogging up. It is not that I don’t like boots and blue jeans. It is not that I can’t get excited about football. I do and I can. But for a long time, the end of summer has been for me, more than anything else, the harbinger of winter. I start feeling the cold long before it gets here, drawing my shoulders up to my ears the minute the wind picks up, shivering involuntarily at the first long-range forecast. I am not proud. Normally I am the one admonishing others to pay attention, to be alert, to notice the moment. And here I am, once a year, losing sight of what is in dread of what is to come. I am, as I said, not proud. There are, according to the best statistics, over a quarter million people in Georgia alone who are visually impaired. For at least some of them, glasses or contact lenses or the best Lasik surgeon in the world wouldn’t do any good. They are completely, irreversibly blind. That statistic frightens me. And not just because my nearsightedness can sometimes make it difficult to read road signs or the credits on a movie screen. It frightens me because I know without the help of any statistician that there are a great many more people who are equally, if differently, blind. People who can’t see the wealth in which they stand, the beauty in which they walk, the incredible grace in which they live and move and have their being. People who are so madly working for an indeterminate future that they are immune to the poignancy of today. I don’t want to be a part of that statistic, not even in the single instance of the apprehension of winter. I want to be the statistic that has 20/20 vision, that sees every leaf, every smile, every shade of every color right now exactly as it is and, in seeing it, gasps at the wonder, marvels at the magic, weeps at the preciousness of the singularity. Toward that end, I am not unaware that, like Dorothy with her ruby slippers, I have within myself the power to make that happen. Maybe not by clicking my heels together, but by being very still and repeating over and over again to myself what I know to be true. I pause. Briefly. Look again at the light thrown onto the table through the window blinds. It isn’t dull; it is soft. It is not weak; it is soothing. It is not gray; it is silver – rippling and shimmering like the surface of a lake in autumn. Winter will come. It will be cold. I will shiver and watch my breath form miniature clouds. I will stare at the ice lace on the windows and make up a name for the pattern. I will look at all the empty branches and imagine them as letters in another language. I will make a sincere effort not to complain. For now, for today, I will watch the last summer light and see, with clear vision, only what is, not what will be. Boiled peanuts, goldenrod, and combines rolling over fields with the precision of a marching band. Late tomatoes, early asters, and battalions of school buses filled with children smelling of sweat and ketchup and glue. Hot pink sunsets, bruise-colored muscadines, and the horizon-wide view of summer in full. Copyright 2018

The way back is always longer. The clouds are high, white as bleached sheets. Somewhere behind them is the sun, so bright that, even shielded by sunglasses, my eyes are squinting. The waves flap and overlap and tease my feet in unpredictable rhythm. This is what I do at the beach: I walk. I play in the water, push children on boogie boards, sit in low chairs and observe the species, but mostly I walk. And this week I’ve done it seven times on two different islands. I’ve dodged jellyfish and horseshoe crabs, fishing lines and lifeguard stands, sand castles, sand buckets, and sandwiches. I’ve listened to squealing toddlers and squeaking wheels and squawking seagulls. I’ve watched the tides move in and out, the boats move in and out, the people move in and out. All while walking. Left, right, left. This morning I walk for the last time. The last time for this time. It is still early and the only other people on the beach are the dog-walkers, the runners, and the shell-seekers. I head north, toward the lighthouse where my friend Jason proposed to my friend Amy, toward the jetty where my friend Francie got a cut on her leg that left an inches-long scar, toward some undetermined-as-of-yet spot where I will decide to turn around and head back. It is quiet enough, still enough that all I have to dodge is thoughts, all there is to hear is my own inner voice, all there is to watch is where I put my step. A rare moment. I find myself considering other shorelines upon which I have walked – Cape Cod in October’s early morning fog, Key West in pressure cooker heat, the various islands in this chain we Georgians call ours – and I realize, just about the time I notice the sun’s rapid ascent and decide to turn around, that there is one thing all those walks had in common. The way back was always longer. Not in inches or yards or miles. Not, really, even in measurable time. The way back was longer because there is no novelty to the view. The way back was longer because the anticipation had come to an end. The way back was longer because all that walking made me tired. Kate and I were talking just the other day about reconciliation, making amends, asking forgiveness. Those are big topics these days and there can be no argument that our tiny blue dot floating in the endless darkness of space needs a lot of all of them, but I think it’s easy, when you’re focusing on the big picture, to forget that the little picture is even there. Yes, we as a nation, a state, a people have a long way to go in relating to each other, all the each others, with fairness and in love. But just as important (Some might argue even more important.) is how we as individuals treat the each others we know, with whom we share office space, a classroom, a history, with whom we share or used to share an address or a name. When that treatment is less than fair, less than loving, when we, literally or figuratively, walk away from our responsibilities as bearers of the divine spirit, all we do is make the way back – the only, singular, solitary way back – longer. I’ve gone far past the lighthouse now, way beyond the jetty and, suddenly, I know it’s time to turn around and walk in the other direction. I am hot and thirsty and tired. I am not looking forward to retracing my steps. And, yet, I begin. One step in the opposite direction is the beginning of the way home. Copyright 2018

It is Sunday morning. I am sitting at a restaurant table overlooking the beach at St. Simons. The sky is the color of new chambray. The water is the color of an oft-worn, oft-washed Dickey work shirt. The entire landscape is bathed in blue. Using the Crayons provided by the kind server, I am drawing, on the back of the children’s menu, a color wheel. Jackson and Chambless are watching me carefully as I demonstrate how red and blue together make purple, blue and yellow together make green, yellow and red together make orange. They lean toward me and the color wheel as far as they can without falling out of their chairs. They stare with admiration and amazement. It is magic. “Let me try!” “I want the blue!” “Look! Look! See? It’s purple!” I have always been fascinated by color. The first tangible thing that I ever coveted was a 64-pack of Crayola crayons, convinced that cornflower and salmon and goldenrod were infinitely better than plain ol’ blue and red and yellow. I spent hours in my mother's sewing room arranging the endless spools of thread into sections and the sections by hue. My first term paper, written in the seventh grade for Mrs. Nell Brown, was about the use of color in interior decorating. It was in researching that term paper, completed entirely by using the card catalog and the heavy-as-a-cinder-block Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, that I first learned about the color wheel – primary and secondary colors, warm and cold colors, complementary colors. In doing so, I found explanation for the extremely strong preferences I exhibited, sometimes to my mother’s chagrin, every time she and I went to the fabric store. I also armed myself to entertain my great-nephew and -niece fifty years later. A few days later, still on the island, I am sitting high above the ground on the screened porch of the condominium where I and some co-workers are staying during a conference. It is early morning. I am surrounded by trees and shrubs and other assorted vegetation. Green. In every possible shade. This island is one of a handful of places on the earth where I am most at home, most myself. There are moments when I long for it with an urgency that is palpable. And the image that always comes to mind, that glues itself to my eyelids, is always the blue sky over the blue water. The sky and all its striations, the water in all its undulations – the blues catch my breath and hold me in their thrall. But what I suddenly realize this morning is that here, at this place that holds so much of my heart, there are also greens. A myriad of greens. Kelly and hunter, jade and juniper, mint and avocado. There is the bright green of young pine needles and the deep, almost black green of magnolia leaves in shadow. There is the iridescent chartreuse of the marsh and the celadon of the Spanish moss. Chlorophyll, amazing in all its incarnations. That realization morphs into the further epiphany that I probably – no, most assuredly – visualize other places, not to mention people and situations, in monochrome. I pause deliberately to allow myself to feel the disappointment, the embarrassment, the regret. When did I become satisfied with less than the box of 64? What is preventing me from reaching for aquamarine and mulberry, periwinkle and burnt sienna? And, most importantly, how quickly can I pour every single one of them out of the box and color their points down to nubs? Cpyright 2018