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The late afternoon sun made my shadow long and narrow. It stretched out in front of me like a plumb line. I had brought with me no book, no iPod, nothing to mute the sound of my shoes crunching like cereal on the dirt that just the day before had been mud. A few yards ahead, startled by my approach, a covey of quail flushed from its hiding place in the broom sedge. The flutter of twenty wings sounded like pages of a book – thick and well-worn – falling from beneath a thumb’s stroke. They rose and scattered, some of them barely clearing the vegetation. One of them flew head-height across the road in front of me, its soft brown body a smudge against the sky. They are such vulnerable creatures. Shy and elusive, they generally depend upon their camouflage to protect them, crouching and freezing when threatened, and they fly only when danger is close. And, yet, they like to live on the edges of things. Edges of fields, edges of forests. Edges are perilous places. There is a photo in the windowsill of my office. A sunrise over Goulds Inlet, one of my favorite spots on my favorite island. My boss took the photo and gave it to me, aware of my affinity for sunsets and St. Simons. This morning he came to the door to ask a question, make a comment, alert me to something, I don’t remember what exactly. “Nice photo,” he quipped, pointing to the one in the windowsill. And from there our conversation slipped and slid from one place to another until we were talking about erosion and accretion, the falling away and the building back. “Edges are fragile places,” I said. I visited some friends this weekend, friends who enfold me, warm me, feed me. Friends who care not one whit what irritations I bring with me, what impatience I pack in my suitcase, what impertinence and frustration and general human-being-ness I drag through the front door. They care only that I am there and I care only that they have welcomed me. We have loved and laughed and lived not just from the sweet center of existence, the place where the heart beats strong and steady and the sun shines long and hard and the future can not possibly be anything but wondrous, but also from the edges. The perilous edges. The fragile edges. Places where hearts and bodies and wills were pushed to their limits. Places where camouflage was not enough to forestall danger, where erosion ate away at foundations. Places where the dirt crunching beneath our feet was broken dreams. And this is what I have learned: I would rather live on the edge – the perilous, fragile edge. Because it is how we live, what we do on the edge that determines whether we are men and women of courage or cowardice, faith or fear. It is how we face the attacks – with shattered shields or no shields at all – that measures the depths of our dreams. And it is with whom we face them – those who know the edge rather than those who huddle in the center – that make the battle, regardless of its outcome, worthwhile. Copyright 2017

It was a gift from Daddy’s friend Frank Simmons when we first moved out to Adabelle in 1974. It was supposed to be – “supposed to be” taking on the colloquial Southern meaning of “presented with the understanding and belief that it was” – a silver-leaf maple. It didn’t take long for everybody concerned to figure out that it wasn’t, like a lot of things, what it was made out to be. It didn’t take long because a sycamore tree, which is what it was, will grow like a weed under the right conditions and, apparently, the backyard offered excellent conditions. Over the years we decided that it was all just as well. That sycamore became an excellent climbing tree for Adam and Kate and the flower bed Mama made around its trunk burst forth in the spring with a wild mess of daffodils and red lilies that could have made a beautiful cover for Southern Living. We were never much for raking leaves at our house, so when the leaves, big as a grown man’s hand, starting falling and floating through the autumn sky we ignored the mess and just enjoyed the rustle and crunch as we walked through them. I was always particularly enamored with the bark, the way it peeled off in long sheets and left the tree smooth and cool. It made me think of the Native American canoes in my elementary school social studies books and I imagined how it could have been used like papyrus to send messages or record stories. I didn’t know then that the peeling accompanied growth. Years later, after I’d built my own house, I came home one afternoon to find Mama and Daddy in my backyard, huddled around a fingerling of a tree with a couple of bright green leaves sprouted at the top. “We brought you a sycamore,” Daddy pronounced as he stomped around the freshly-turned dirt with his work boot. “This all right?” he asked pointing at the tree and referring to the location. It was, of course. That tree is somewhere around 15 years old now. Maybe a little older. I don’t know for sure. What I do know for sure is that it is old enough to have become an elegant and more than adequate shade tree for Sandhill and young enough to still look small compared to Mama and Daddy’s. I walk under its branches every afternoon as I make my way around the yard and, at a certain point, looking from a certain angle, and when the field in between is growing peanuts not corn, I can see the other sycamore tree at the same time. The older house with the bigger tree and the newer house with the smaller tree. It reminds me of the elementary school primers with which we learned to read the words big and little, tall and short, old and new. Opposites, our teachers told us. These things are opposites. But our teachers were wrong. I am standing under my sycamore and one of its limbs has gotten tangled in my hair. I reach up to pull it loose, to brush away the fading leaves that fall across my cheek, and I realize that, in the context of living things, there are no opposites. Only movement. Little turns into big, short grows into tall, new will eventually be old. Whatever it appears to be today, it may well be something else tomorrow. Or next year. The joy may turn into pain, the loss into gain. The silver-leaf maple may become a sycamore. It is incumbent upon us only to watch and listen, to pay close attention to the metamorphosis that is happening in every moment. Watch and listen and write it all down on the peeling bark. Copyright 2017

When the click and flicker that signaled the loss of power sent the house into dimness and silence I thought about going through the rooms and turning everything off. Then I realized I wasn’t sure exactly what had been on, which lamps, which ceiling fans, which ceiling lights. All that light – all that automatic, instantly available, taken-for-granted light – and in less than ten seconds I’d forgotten which of the many switches produced it. The power came back on some 25 hours later, just after noon. I went through the house and, turning them off as I went, counted the lamps and overhead lights that were suddenly blazing again. One, two, three, ... eleven, twelve. Had it really been that gloomy and gray as Irma’s wide arms flailed wildly outside my windows? So gloomy and gray as to require that much light to beat back the darkness? I didn’t spend much time on the contemplation. The sun was forcing its way through the clouds, so as soon as I could get the towels that caught the leak from the ceiling up off the floor, I was outside to greet her. It didn’t matter that the rocking chairs were clogging up the guest room and the deck furniture was jammed in the shed and all those towels needed washing. All that could wait. The first thing I noticed was that the air was thick with the smell of peanuts, a mixture of nitrogen and dirt, that strange perfume that signals the beginning of fall. I heard, in the distance, the call of geese. And, there, high in the sky, exactly where she is supposed to be was the sun. Light. Bigger than Irma. Brighter than LED. Sandhill is nearly 26 years old. Studying the blueprints with the builder I pointed at every window, “Bigger.” “Longer.” “More.” He accommodated me. For at least 15 years they were completely unadorned. No curtains. No blinds. I wanted to be able to sit anywhere, stand in any spot and see the slant of light falling in straight lines across the floor, in even curves across the back of the couch. I monitored the seasons by the angle at which the moonlight came through the window of my bedroom. I didn’t care that it faded fabrics and wood. I didn’t care that it increased my power bill. And, honestly, I didn’t care that people thought it was odd. Grannie came to Sandhill one day and noted, “Darling, you don’t have anything up to your windows.” “I know, Grannie. I like it that way.” “But, what if somebody was looking in?” Her tone of voice held both genuine curiosity and abject fear. “Well, Grannie,” I offered in a moment of cheekiness never to be repeated, “if they come this far they deserve to see something.” I don’t think she ever got over it. But I hope she understood that my need for light is greater than any apprehension I might have of being observed. Though I’d never thought of it in metaphorical terms before the visitation of Irma and the waiting for EMC and the remembrance of that visit from Grannie, I’ve decided that one of the truly grand things about growing up and growing older is learning that how one may appear to others is never worth apprehension. It is no reason to hide behind curtains, no reason to wear a mask, no reason to pretend to be anyone other than who you are. No reason to stand anywhere but in the light. Copyright 2017

I am 4 or 5 years old. My arms are curled tightly around my father's neck. His arms are wrapped around my waist. We are standing in the Ogeechee River, wide and dark, brown as coffee. The trees that grow along its banks are tall and heavy with branches that dangle over the river, dripping Spanish moss. On the sandbar just a few yards away, my family – aunts and uncles and cousins, grandparents, my mother, my brother – move around in a cone of sunshine, a spotlight cutting through the canopy of cypress and pine and scrub oak. They are laughing and talking. The children are running back and forth, splashing at the edge of the water. It is bright and noisy where they are. But where we are – my father and I – it is dim and quiet. It is peaceful. It is a different place. This is my first, my oldest memory of not just being outside, but of being IN the world. I have conjured this memory – and I do mean conjured as in pulling it up with a kind of spell, an incantation of wondering and a potion of solitude and quietness – as I work on remarks I am scheduled to give to an environmental group. My topic is “How To Make An Enviromentalist.” I have no idea why I suggested that topic. Do I even know what an environmentalist is? A word loaded with meaning, it used by people of widely varying stripes with alternately positive and negative connotations. It is a word like “artist,” “Southerner,” “liberal,” “athlete,” or “Christian,” heavy with history, both personal and societal. Is the “artist” a photographer or a classical pianist? Is the “Southerner” a descendant of the First Families of Virginia or a wiregrass farmer? Is the “athlete” a member of the PGA tour or someone who goes the gym every day after work? I decide that an environmentalist is a person who has a significant emotional or historical attachment to a particular place, an attachment which motivates him or her to work to preserve that place. I also decide that I am one. An environmentalist, at least this one, takes a while to make, but in that first, oldest memory I can see the recipe and the ingredients. First, I notice how young I was. Four or five. My attention had not yet been captured by the socialization of school. My entire world was my family. Where they went, I went. What they liked, I liked. What they honored, protected, appreciated, I would learn to honor, protect, and appreciate. Second, I notice how I felt. Held securely in the arms of someone I trusted implicitly, without even knowing what trust was, I knew no fear. And knowing no fear, I could absorb the sensory elements of that experience, absorb and retain them for the rest of my life. Third, I notice where I was. The Ogeechee River is right down the road. It is the spot to which the people I know are referring when they say “the river.” No one needs to ask which one. It is just a river, but it is ours and therein lies its great value. Early exposure through a trusted adult in a comfortable and familiar place. The rain and sunshine and fertilizer that turned my innate connection to the earth, a connection every human has, into a great love. That made me an environmentalist. This is what I will tell them, the people who have asked me to share my thoughts. This is what I will tell them and suggest that they go provide the rain and sunshine and fertilizer for a child they know. This is what I will tell them with the prayer that we all become, all remain environmentalists. Copyright 2017

Mama didn't buy Jell-O. Not even to adorn with a can of fruit cocktail and call it salad. The only time Keith and I got Jell-O was at school, cut into a square and plopped into a perfectly sized compartment on one of those indestructible oblong trays. I was probably 11 or 12 when I saw the first commercial about Jell-O 1-2-3. I was absolutely mesmerized by the assertion that one could mix the contents of the handy packet with water, put it in the refrigerator in a tall glass (preferably, it would appear, one with a long stem), and come back later to a lovely and delicious parfait, a three-layered delicacy that included “creamy topping, fluffy chiffon, and cool, clear gelatin.” I somehow convinced my frugal mother to buy this amazing product and proceeded to create what I was sure would be a food so sophisticated that it would somehow enable me to overcome all the impediments (too tall, too smart, too religious) that stood between me and popularity. The end result was not as amazing as the marketing. The top layer, which I expected to be a lighter version of the meringue Mama whipped up from egg whites for Sunday’s lemon pie, tasted like much of nothing. It collapsed in my mouth leaving behind the faintest hint of artificial strawberry flavor. The second layer, “fluffy chiffon” for which I had such high hopes, was okay. It reminded me a lot of pudding except without the richness of pudding and the thick feel of milk and eggs heated and stirred so slowly that the result was neither solid nor liquid, but simply a heavy presence of deliciousness dissolving in your mouth. And the bottom layer, well, it was just Jell-O. This is what I am thinking of when I walk out onto the porch in the early morning, look across the field, and see the first indication that summer is packing its bags in anticipation of its departure. The sky is layered. Like a Jello-O 1-2-3 parfait. The clouds are white like cotton batting, like cotton candy, like cotton balls glued to construction paper to look like clouds. They start at the top of the pine trees at the property line, stretching straight up to wherever the top of the sky might be. Underneath the clouds is a layer of fog, dull silver like a tray in need of polishing. It hovers between the treetops and head-height of a good-sized man. And under that is the mist, the damp translucent mist that makes the domed rows of peanut vines glisten in the morning light. It is hard not to laugh at myself, laugh out loud. Where do these thoughts come from? It is 7:30 in the morning. I am standing on the porch catching my breath before leaving for work. I am looking at a peanut field shrouded by clouds. An image from nearly 50 years ago jumps to the front of my mind, an image I did not know existed. What does it mean? I don’t know. Yet. There is no offering of regrets to memory’s RSVP. It will, without permission or the necessity of a token, transport you faster than any time machine to a moment, a breath, a blink that changed everything. Or didn’t. It can tickle or scald, bless or scold. It is simultaneously seductive and frightening, luring and repelling, even as you realize that it can be none of those things without your acquiescence. It is, after all, yours. The Jell-O parfait, sophisticated though it may have been, did not make me popular. Nor particularly sated. What it did do was give me a template to lay over a morning sky some 50 years later, a way to see differently something I see every day, and a realization that what the quantum physicists say is true: past, present, and future are all right here, right now. We haven’t lost a thing. Copyright 2017

The first day it rained. The second day it rained. The third day the sun came out, slowly and sheepishly, as though embarrassed by her failure to perform earlier in the week. The beach swelled with people, families mostly, and the toys of various sizes and costs without which the vacationers would have had to notice the ocean or, worse, engage in conversation. My friends and I planted our chairs a few feet above the water line, cognizant of the rising tide and the probable necessity of moving them up the sand at some point in the not distant future. The waves rushed and fell back, shouted and then lapsed into a whisper. Over and over. Back and forth. I could feel myself slowing, like a yo-yo hurled from a curled fist and left to unwind, its movements growing shorter and less violent with each up and down. Breaths growing deeper, muscles relaxing, thoughts quieting. It lasted about ten minutes. “I need to walk,” I told my friends as I laced up my tennis shoes. I headed south. It was late afternoon and I’d spent most of the week listening to lectures on topics like “Cyber-Bullying” and “Trying the High-Profile Murder Case.” I’d seen images and heard words that I wanted to bleach from my memory. I’d been reminded over and over that evil exists and that the defense against its advancing tide is only as strong as the hearts of the men and women holding the line. I think I can be forgiven for feeling less than joyous. I passed two elaborate sand fortresses under construction, a sailboat faded by salt and sun, a stick-drawn beach volleyball court, and tent after tent shading people of every size and shape and color, immobile and, for the most part, silent. It was as though, exhausted by the process of getting themselves and their children and the coolers and towels and tents to the beach, they had collapsed just a few yards short of the object of their desires. Farther down the beach, in front of the grand old hotel, the row of blue canvas chairs shielded by blue canvas umbrellas, military in the precision of its line, held more still and silent people. Their faces were hidden by sunglasses as they stared straight ahead, not moving, barely breathing. Even they, with the ease of wealth and the service of other people, exuded the air of, if not despair, at least lethargy. As though nothing, not even this brilliant summer day at the edge of the ocean, was enough. I had just turned around to head back to my friends when a little boy, no older than three or four, darted from the shadows of one of the tents directly in front of me. I had to stop to avoid hitting him. He was at top speed and never saw me. There was a huge smile on his face and I watched him run as hard as he could toward the water, oblivious to anything else. He knew what he wanted, he knew where he was going, and he was delighted by it all. Within the span of those few seconds, I felt my spirits lift. I am long past three and I’ve lived far too long to be oblivious, but he reminded me that there is absolutely nothing to prevent me from knowing what I want, knowing where I’m going, and being delighted by it all. I can be the little boy, arms flailing and legs pumping, sprinting toward the wild and endless ocean. There will still be evil and darkness and injustice, but from my place in the line the world will see a reflection of the sun. Copyright 2017

Second grade was the year I asked for and got a stuffed French poodle for Christmas. I named her Fifi. She had thick wire in her legs and could stand on my dresser by herself. It was the year that Mama made me a pink pin-wale corduroy dress for the Valentine's Day party at school. It had a Peter Pan collar and a high yoke with tiny pearl buttons down the front. It was the year that I added to my vocabulary the words college, scholarship, and author and decided that those words were mine. It was in first grade that I took my first tentative steps out into the world, but second grade was the moment when I realized my autonomy, my separateness, my ability to experience things and feelings distinct and apart from my family. One November afternoon, sunny but with the dullness of fall, the brown wooden box on the wall at the upper left-hand corner of the chalkboard crackled to life. “Attention please,” said Mr. Adams, our principal. “Teachers, attention please. President Kennedy has been shot.” And he placed the big silver microphone near a radio from which a scratchy voice offered up the first reports of what had just happened in Dallas. I remember Peggy Franklin bursting into tears. I remember Mama holding the screen door open as I stepped off the bus, her face drawn and tears sliding down her cheeks. I remember sitting in a big leather chair at my grandfather’s furniture store on West Main Street watching the flickering gray television images of horses and the soldiers moving slowly down the street in what I recognized as Washington, D.C. . I remember John John in his little double-breasted coat saluting his father's casket. I remember the rapid expansion of my vocabulary to include assassination, motorcade, and cortege. A couple of weeks ago I happened to be in Dallas for a few hours with a friend and her two grown daughters. Our hotel was just a few blocks away from the site of the assassination and we decided to pay a visit. The concierge at the hotel handed us a map and pointed out the spot. Dealey Plaza. In five minutes the four of us were standing on the sidewalk where, over 50 years ago, crowds had stood and waved and cheered the handsome young president and his beautiful wife in her pink Chanel suit. We could see the building that used to be the Texas School Book Depository. We actually stood on the grassy knoll. Sandra and I shared with her girls what we remembered. One of them remarked that they’d not covered the Kennedy assassination in school. Probably, I told her, the same reason that we never got to the Korean War. We ran out of time. I’ve thought of that conversation a lot since I got home, thought of it in connection with the admonition that Moses offered the children of Israel as they set out to take the Promised Land. It’s important to remember, he told them. It’s important to tell your children what happened before. Rehearse it in their ears. Over and over. Tell them the stories. The good ones and the bad ones. The victories and the defeats. The moments when the human spirit triumphed over despair and the moments when despair seemed – for the moment, but only for the moment – to win. We have to tell them. We can’t leave it to their friends or the schools or the churches. We can’t leave it to the news media or social media or any other media. It is up to us, the adults who love them. We have to tell them the most important story of all – that hope never runs out of time. Copyright 2017

The first funeral home fan that I remember (probably from the funeral of a great-aunt or uncle, my attendance at which, as a child of four or five, would never in that time have been considered inappropriate) had a stock painting of Jesus as the Good Shepherd on the front. On the back would have been the name and address of the funeral home and a tasteful slogan along the lines of “Here when you need us” or “Treating your family like family for over 50 years.” In the years since, I’ve wondered about things like whether there were dyes in the first century to make robes such a deep shade of blue and such a rich shade of red, but back then my wondering was limited to how long I was going to have to wear the crinoline. These days funeral home fans don't always invoke the divine. Instead of Jesus standing at the door and knocking, some of my more recent acquisitions have featured bucolic scenes of a meadow, impossibly green, impossibly verdant, and necessarily generic. The unnamed locale could be an Appalachian valley, a New England orchard, or the Mississippi Delta in spring, just after a soaking rain. Where it most definitely is not is where I am today – a sun-scorched cemetery in south Georgia where wiregrass and cockleburs fight for space with the gravel rocks that tumble against each other under the tires of the hearse. Where I stand just outside the perimeter of the green tent under which the family is seated in metal folding chairs that still look exactly like metal folding chairs despite the fabric covers. Where I fan with the finesse of one bred to the task – elbow tucked against my ribs, wrist bent at a 45-degree angle and twisted slightly so that my palm is facing my chest, fingers curled loosely around the handle. Down and up, down and up. A regular beat. Like the one I’ve been taught is proper when administering CPR. The beat to “Stayin’ Alive.” The fanning does little more than stir the hot air. My arms grow damp and a cling like Saran Wrap forms between my skin and my clothes. There is a kind gentleman standing next to me who pops open a black umbrella and moves a step closer. “This will help a little,” he says, and it does. The shadow from the umbrella is dark and round. The preacher reads a psalm, sings a hymn, shares a few remembrances of the departed. I can’t make out every word from my vantage point where I’m trying very hard not to step on someone else’s grave. He says something, I think, about comfort for the grieving and that word – comfort – catches my attention. A comfort. That is what the fan is. Not in a physical way, but in the way of being a solace in an uncertain world. It is a promise that, in a world in which so much has changed, is changing, will continue to change, some things haven’t, don’t, and won’t. “Here,” says the kind face in a dark suit. “Take this thin yet sturdy piece of cardboard with a balsa wood handle and be reminded that some things last. It won’t keep you cool, but it will keep you sure.” The preacher says amen and I walk toward the car where a quick blast from the air conditioner vaporizes the sweat and replaces it with chill bumps. I slip the funeral home fan up over the visor where over the next few days it will slip and slide back and forth until, eventually, it will fall gently to the seat beside me. I reach over and pick it up, think back to the funeral, the heat, the gentleman with the umbrella. And I feel it again, the comfort. I turn off the air conditioner and fan, fan, fan. Copyright 2017

To make a tree, begin with a straight line, vertical. On each side of the straight line add additional straight lines, shorter, at an angle. These are limbs. To the limbs add more straight lines, shorter still. These are branches. Continue in this manner until your tree is finished. It is not difficult to master, this skill. It is, in fact, a near-universal one. Long before a child learns how to put together a particular combination of lines and squiggles to make his or her name, that child knows how to draw a tree. Soft fingers curl around a crayon, a Sharpie, a pencil fat as an over-ripe stalk of asparagus. A head bends low over paper. Any child can draw a tree. I don't ordinarily think a lot about trees when I am within sight of the ocean. Trees belong to the land, my anchor. The ocean, my compass, belongs only to itself. But tonight is different. Tonight I find myself hovering between the two. I am on the north end of Jekyll Island. The moon is an eyelash away from full, though it is a little hard to tell. A veil of gauzy clouds makes it look as though someone has taken an eraser to its edges. The dusk is heavy with dampness from the day's rain, threatening to make it the evening’s. Along the dunes, the seagrass trembles in the slightest of breezes. I am standing under a cluster of live oak trees. Stretching my neck to look up into the canopy they form over the wide green lawn, I notice that the trees – the ones whose very name distinguishes them from the ones I learned how to draw – , every last one of them, have grown not straight and tall toward the sky, but curved in the direction of the ocean. This is not a characteristic of the species. There are thousands of live oaks all over the South growing upright and unbent, like yardsticks and arrows and 2x4s. Planted somewhere else, the acorns that eventually became guardians of this island would have done the same. But they were planted here – by bird or man or God, who knows – where, from the moment the first tiny twig cracked the soil, the wind created by the ocean has pushed and pushed and pushed against the will that would grow them straight. It is still light enough for me to see the way the branches curl around and around, back and forth, stretching up and out toward the ocean like words written in Arabic. I am both anxious and curious in my ignorance of what they say. I've been here before, on this exact spot. I can see and hear and smell and taste all that I saw and heard and smelled and tasted. I can feel what I felt. I stand very still and I am back in that other time. There is another full moon; children are laughing; I am wearing a black and white dress; the breeze is pulling at my hair pinned up off my neck. I take a deep breath and return to the present as the translation of the trees’ message moves through me like an electrical current: For hundreds of years we have felt the wind. For hundreds of years we have borne its force. For hundreds of years we have yielded to its strength, but we have never given in. Across the way the waves slap at the shore and the needle of the compass quivers in delight. Copyright 2017

When Big Phyllis died, Lynn decided that, while flowers were nice and there was certain to be spray after spray from the Republican Women and the Daughters of the Confederacy and any number of other organizations to which Big Phyllis had offered her considerable talents and opinions, what the grave overlooking the bluff in Bonaventure Cemetery really needed was some water from Eagle Creek. I don’t remember that I’ve ever said no to one of Lynn’s ideas, so as soon as the funeral was over, she – Lynn, that is, not Big Phyllis (though if anyone could survive her own funeral that force of nature could) – and I headed to the drainage ditch that had been endowed with magical powers by nothing more than the words of another force of nature. My theory is that one of the reasons Erk and Big Phyllis were such good friends is that neither one of them ever gave much credence to the odds or put much faith in the pundits. They both knew that statistics can’t factor in things like heart. So there we were, in broad daylight, in front of God and four lanes of traffic on Fair Road, two grown women in what passes for funeral clothes these days, scrambling down the bank in our high heels, hers higher than mine. Right at the edge, thinking more of our shoes than our health, we slipped them off and tiptoed into the shallow brown water. I held one of Lynn’s hands and leaned back toward dry ground as she leaned forward holding an empty plastic water bottle. The graveside service was not until the next day and Lynn had to get back to Atlanta, so the actually delivery or, as we preferred to call it, the anointing of Big Phyllis’s grave with Eagle Creek water was left in my solitary hands. As the gnats swarmed and the bagpipe player played, I held the bottle, whose contents looked a lot like a urine sample, unobtrusively down by my side. At the final amen, I circled behind the casket, enlisting along the way, the assistance of Big Phyllis’s son-in-law to serve as shield; not everyone, we understood, would appreciate the appropriateness of the gesture. I opened the bottle, sprinkled some of its contents into the open grave, and emptied the rest on the ground around it. It has been a long time since I have felt such a sense of accomplishment. Lynn’s husband Lamar is not new to this circus and he, without complaint, documented the gathering of the water with a photograph. It is an image of two women smiling, two women looking straight into the sun, two women smiling, two women holding hands. I keep it on my phone. The other night, as we were waiting for Chambless’s pre-school graduation program to begin, Jackson, who is practically a first-grader now and for whom pre-school seems ages and ages ago, took my phone and began scrolling through the photos. Most of them are of him and his sister – ball games and birthday parties, silly faces and serious gazes, holidays and regular days I was just lucky enough to spend with them. He stopped scrolling when he came to the photo of me and Lynn in Eagle Creek. He pointed and looked up at me. “Why are you standing in that water?” I don’t remember exactly what I told him – something about a football coach thinking it was magic – , but the question has stayed with me, has continued to resurface in my thoughts over and over these last few days. Why are you standing in that water? Why are you doing something that no one else would understand? Why are you doing something that appears to have no purpose or no chance of success? And, for heaven’s sake, why are you doing it so publicly? The answer, I think, is the answer to all the great questions that start with why. Why was I standing in that water? Why am I standing in that water today and will I stand in it tomorrow? Because love compels me. I, we will never get beyond the boundaries of what we know and with which we are comfortable unless and until we are moved by love. And that is real magic. Copyright 2017

Poor Blanche Dubois. Always depending upon the kindness of strangers. It is a dangerous thing, depending upon the unknown. Much better (if one must depend at all, if one cannot be left to one's own devices) to depend upon the kindness of friends. This past week – in a five-day trek that took me to Macon, then to Kennesaw, then to Powder Springs, then to Lake Blackshear and, then, back home – the kindness of friends accompanied me like a shadow. It began with my visit to the English professor father of one of my oldest friends. It is a matter of both satisfaction and trepidation that he reads what I write and a matter of genuine pleasure to spend time with someone who, nearing ninety, still writes himself. Toward the end of our visit, he leaned forward and extended his hands toward me, palms open and facing each other, the gesture of someone intent upon making his point. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that you should get a dog. A big dog.” I felt a grin spread across my face. The writer had turned paternal on me. All my musings about wandering in the woods and rambling down dirt roads have made him worry for my safety. I assured him that I was careful, that my brother and my parents lived nearby, that I was, in fact, considering getting a dog. He sat back in his chair, content for the moment that I was in no danger and when I left a few minutes later I did so feeling well-tended. Just a couple of miles down the road was Wesleyan and Alumnae Weekend where there would be no end of hugging and smiling and reminiscing. The friend in whose home I was staying had just experienced a significant loss and was in the midst of a major home renovation and, yet, she managed, as always, to be the quintessential hostess. “You know where the Diet Coke is,” she said. “Manage the thermostat to your liking,” she said. “Make yourself at home,” she said with every word and gesture. And I did. On Sunday morning I drove to Kennesaw and had lunch with my niece Kate and her husband Kirck, a lunch that included an up-close look at the two of them teasing and laughing at each other with a sweetness I dared not mention to either, but which made my chest expand with happiness and which concluded with a purposeless and unhurried visit to a nearby Barnes & Noble. I left the store with four books to add to the stack at home and the giggly delight that there is someone, some two, in my family for whom wandering around a bookstore is as much fun as it is for me. In Powder Springs I drove into a cul-de-sac, parked my car on the edge of the yard, and took out my umbrella. It is never easy to extend condolences and the wet gloom felt appropriate. Sandra and I have been friends for 50 years and it was the death of her mother that had brought her from Indianapolis and me from Sandhill. Bad taste or not, we had one of Sandra’s grown-up daughters take a photo of the two of us and looking at that photo later all I could see was the little girls we used to be, the little girls who were so different from each other, but recognized the seeds of loyalty and faithfulness. The final stop was Lake Blackshear where the talk went late into the night, some of it significant and some of it frivolous, where I told the story of how my mother used to save the biscuits from supper and turn them into breakfast by slicing them in half, slathering butter on them, and toasting them under the broiler, only to wake up the next morning and find that my friend had done exactly that on the morning of my departure. Back at home and sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch, I can take a deep breath and absorb the gifts of my trek around the state. The hospitality and the tenderness. The laughter and the tears. The questions and the answers. I can depend upon those things. Those things and the fragile human beings through which they came, not one of whom is a stranger. Copyright 2017

There is one grapefruit left. One. It sits in the wire basket on the counter along with five apples that are, quite frankly, past their prime. It is not-quite yellow, not-quite orange and it is smudged with dark lines, tiny lines that cross and knot like a web, that attest to the fact that it is not a grocery store grapefruit. It is not perfectly round or perfectly hued, but it is a grapefruit. The others have already been scored and peeled, skinned and sectioned, bitten with lips drawn back in anticipation of tartness. This one, though, may well, by now, be too dry to eat. I’ve passed by, looked at it over and over again, and, yet, I’ve chosen not to stop, not to get out the knife, not to take and eat. I’ve just figured out why. Cooper was a much loved 8-year-old who liked to wear hats, especially fedoras. He shared a middle name with his aunt and a home with two sisters and a mother and father who described him as “an old soul.” He endured far too many visits to doctors and hospitals with a huge smile and a sense of humor that most grown-ups would envy. In a world where smiles and humor are not that easy to find, his death made no sense. Cooper’s grandmother has been my friend for nearly thirty years. Thirty years and I realized, staring through the windshield into the haze on the interstate, that I had no idea what I would say to her when I walked into her hug. From the parking lot of the Mulberry Street United Methodist Church where a group of us met to ride to the service together, we could see a passel of children on the playground, their voices rising and falling in some indeterminate key, all of them waiting for a mother or father to arrive, to grip a fat little hand in his or her own and lead the way home. The poignancy of the moment, the unconscious tenderness of the parents with the children, underscored the reason why we had come, why Mary Catherine had driven from Signal Mountain and Anne from Blue Ridge and I from Sandhill, why Susan had raced down the interstate from Hartsfield, why others had forgotten whatever else they might have been doing on a Friday afternoon in March to make their way to Riverside Cemetery. At some point, as we stood suspended in the surreality and the sunshine, Mary Catherine said, “I have grapefruit.” It turns out that her cousins who live in Florida had brought her grapefruit, lots of grapefruit, and she wanted to share. So each of us took a few. And I heard myself saying, “You know my motto: There is nothing in life so bad that it can’t be made at least a little better by a party favor.” I immediately felt awful. It was a stupid thing to say. Totally inappropriate. Except that now I know it wasn’t. It was truth. There are moments in life – moments of significant pain, deep uncertainty, or just the occasional awkward silence – when words are not adequate. When whatever power words might otherwise have to soothe anxiety, incite a political movement, or create the universe has been sapped. In those moments all we can do is share. Whatever we have. I didn’t say anything when I walked into my grandmother-friend’s hug. I felt her head against my shoulder. I heard her catch her breath in a sob. I hugged her back. I cried, too. Hugs. Tears. Grapefruit. Here is a grapefruit. Here is my heart. Here are the memories we share and the grief that is now added to those memories. Thank you. Thank you for the grapefruit. Thank you for this grace. There is one grapefruit left. One. It needs no words. Copyright 2017

Across the way, two turkeys, dark and awkward, amble across the field. The larger leads, the smaller follows. Two mockingbirds dive-bomb the holly tree at the corner of the house as though the single berries upon which they are intent are the last two berries on the face of the earth. Their wings flutter like the pages of a old book thumbed hurriedly. Somewhere in the near-distance, a flock of geese squawk squawk squawk. From the vantage of the back door it is hard to tell, but I think the two tiny birds teetering on the edge of the bird feeder and nibbling like polite ladies at an afternoon tea at Carolina wrens. Behind them, somewhere beyond the canopy of kudzu vines, small maples, and scraggly oaks that fall away to the pond, a duck calls out a single guttural note. I am surrounded by birds this morning. I want to stand in the yard in the perfect spring air and still myself into a St. Francis pose in hopes that one or more of them will land on my shoulder, my head, my outstretched hand. My friend Anne is a devoted birdwatcher and I have to admit to a bit of envy when, over the years, she has recounted to our group of friends sightings of scarlet tanagers and goldfinches and indigo buntings, all colorful chaps that, as far as I can tell, have never been drawn to Sandhill. A couple of years ago Annie became a Georgia Master Naturalist through the University of Georgia and they proclaimed her certified to share her knowledge of “the habitats, natural resources and the natural environments of our state” with the rest of us, making it even more evident to me that whatever I might think I know about woods and fields and critters, I am not, as Daddy would say, Ned in the first reader compared to her. Which brings me back to the birds. As a consequence of her newly-obtained knowledge and official recognition thereof, I fully expected Annie to show off. In fact, I wanted her to do just that. I anticipated that the next time we were all sitting around on the wide porch of the big house on Signal Mountain where we do our best to flock once a year, we’d play something like a lightning round of Georgia Nature Bowl, during which each of us would throw out a question and Annie would immediately bark back an answer. “How long does a brown thrasher incubate her eggs?” “Anywhere from eleven to fourteen days. Next?” “How fast does kudzu grow?” “Up to one foot a day. Next?” “How many kinds of frogs are there in Georgia?” “There are 33 species of frogs and toads in Georgia. In addition, Georgia is home to more species of salamanders than any other place in the world, including the largest salamander in America.” It didn’t exactly go like that. We were spread out in the rocking chairs, settled into the stillness of the mountain air, and looking out across the brow where the mist had just about obscured the view of Chattanooga, when somebody heard a bird somewhere off in the bushes. Annie immediately identified the bird and then jumped up and hurried into the house, returning with her iPad. “Let’s get him to come closer.” In a few seconds she had swiped her way to a screen offering a picture of the bird she had identified. “Watch this,” she said and touched the microphone icon. The bird’s song came streaming out of the iPad’s speaker. In a moment the bird, the real bird, called out again, this time closer. Three or four times the sequence was repeated, the iPad, like the Greek Sirens, calling again and again and the real bird answering, nearer and nearer. I don’t remember who lost interest first, the bird or the women, but the call and response was the highlight of the afternoon. Call and response. In music, it is two distinct phrases, one following the other and played by different musicians, in which the second is heard as a commentary on the main theme. In preaching, it is participation of the congregation, verbal encouragement, punctuation of the preacher’s words. “That’s right.” “Amen.” “Praise the Lord!” Call and response. I understand why I want to remain with the mockingbirds and the geese and their brethren. I know why their voices draw me in. They are calling. Calling me. They are playing the theme, preaching the sermon, inviting me to participate in the morning, this singular morning that regardless of its familiarity will never be again. And my job, my one and only job, is to respond. Copyright 2017

One bird feeder hangs from the still empty branch of a sycamore tree. One hangs from the already-budding branch of a saw-tooth oak. Both feeders are full. The birds that frequent these adjacent all-you-can-eat buffets have become braver in recent days. They no longer scatter like dandelion seeds when the back door opens. Instead they flit, without startle, to a perch close enough to their plates that they can watch my movements, know exactly when I’ve left the vicinity, and resume their meals. We are not friends, the birds and I. We are neighbors. The kind who say hello at the mailbox, who are willing to pick up the newspaper when you’re out of town, who remark on the new car in the driveway or compliment the new flowerbed, but who would never even think about being invited in for supper. Good neighbors. One morning last week, just before the cold snap, I walked outside to see both bird feeders being patronized. A male cardinal, all slick and shiny red, stood proudly on the ledge of the feeder dangling from the sycamore tree. He gave me a quick glance and resumed his pecking, a man on a mission and one not about to be deterred by something he’d long ago determined was not a danger. A female cardinal, a color so close to the fresh new leaves of the oak tree that I did not see her at first, bounced quickly away from the feeder at which she’d been nibbling and landed on a nearby branch, her beak clamped onto a single sunflower seed. Her mate’s bravado was matched by her caution. Breeding season for cardinals starts in March and, since there was probably a nest somewhere nearby, the mother’s glare was steady. Even as she raised and lowered her head in an effort to crack open the seed, I remained in the cross hairs of her tiny black eyes. Being the one responsible for filling the feeder did not, apparently, make me any less suspicious. It was amusing to see such stereotypical gender roles being played out among my non-human neighbors. I kept thinking about my avian neighbors long after I left them to their labors and drove off to my own and my curiosity, or, perhaps, just my desire to be a good neighbor, sent me to Google and Wikipedia and all those intangible capitalized places (which have all but taken the place of the tangible lower case places like library and dictionary and encyclopedia) to find out more. I found out that though the bird is most often called the northern cardinal, it is really a southern bird and the first pair did not nest in New England until 1958. I learned that cardinals are counted among the species of birds that “mate for life,” but I also learned that the cardinal’s average life span is one year. Comparing them to other birds known for lifetime monogamy (bald eagle, mute swan, whooping crane) and whose life spans average about 20 years, I found a difference significant enough to make me pull back a little in my admiration of red bird fidelity. I discovered that cardinals do not migrate, that they are fairly social and join in flocks that may even include birds of other species, and that the brightness of the male’s feathers is determined by the carotenoids in his diet. What was most fascinating to me, though, especially in light of my observation of protective mama cardinal and macho daddy cardinal, was the fact that both sexes of the cardinal, not just the male, sing. And their songs sound virtually the same. In most other bird species, the male chooses an exposed perch, a stage, if you will, and offers up his version of a sentimental ballad, a stirring anthem, or a soothing hymn to claim his territory, while the female remains close by, but silent. Not so the cardinals. The cardinals’ two voices multiply the melody and intensify the volume, announce in unison that they, the both of them, are in charge of their chosen province. Which means that my cardinals, the cardinals who had seemed so conventional, so traditional, so “Leave It To Beaver,” were, in fact, the very model of modernity. We are just neighbors, the birds and I. But in taking the time to get to know them, to eliminate the assumption that they are just like all the other birds, and to appreciate what makes them a little more like me, I can be a better neighbor. And that is always one step closer to being friends. Copyright 2017