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[During the season of Advent, I will be sharing four of my favorite Christmas columns from the past 25 years.] The season is upon us. Advent. Preparation. It is time to cut the tree, dust off the ornaments and make the lists. Time to check the calendar and sign the cards and wrap the gifts. Time to stand in line and stop in traffic. Time to get it all done in time. Christians have been observing Advent since sometime around the fourth century. My own observance is a relatively new one. I am still burning the original purple and rose candles that came with the wreath that now sits in the middle of my kitchen table. The sun will soon disappear behind the pine trees at the edge of the farm. The silvery gray of late autumn will settle over Sandhill like a blanket and nighttime will begin its predictable creep over the landscape, into my thoughts. I am wondering why I am doing this. What difference it can possibly make. I pull out a chair and, spurred by what is quite possibly nothing more than guilt, promise myself that this year I will be diligent. I will not get too busy to light each candle in its turn. I will -- on the first and second and third and fourth Sundays of Advent -- calm myself, still myself, give myself the time to reflect. Holding the match over the matchbox, I look at the unlit candles. The wicks are black and brittle. Lines of dripping wax have marred their colors with uneven streaks. One tilts just a bit to the side despite my best efforts to straighten it. They remind me that – despite the frivolity and gaiety, the bells and carols, the good-will and neighborliness in which we cloak ourselves this time of year – it was not into a world of light that the Messiah came, but a world of darkness. Every day brought the drudgery of political oppression, religious persecution and economic despair. The past was a sad indictment of the Jews’ failure as a people. The future promised nothing but more of the same. For four thousand years they had been waiting. In darkness. The words they rehearsed in their children’s ears had become dull in the repetition. The memorials of stone they had built had been lost in the years of wind and rain and neglect. Did anyone still believe? Could anyone still believe? And at that moment, into the silence came the voice of an angel. A divine herald, a prophetic courier with words of promise and hope, a message to the world that what is now is not what will always be. A message for all the world. But the only one who heard it, the single soul with whom Gabriel shared the news was one simple girl. No one else. Not the High Priest or the commander of the occupying army. Not the ruling governor or a learned scribe. Just a simple girl with a wild imagination. Wild enough to stay there and listen to the messenger angel call her things like “highly favored” and “blessed.” Wild enough to listen to him tell her she was going to be the mother of the long-awaited nearly-forgotten Messiah. Wild enough to believe. Twenty-first century Americans aren’t all that different from first century Palestinians, I think. I am no different. I, we struggle with our past failures, wrestle with current crises, worry about a future we can’t predict. What will it take for us – for me – to see through the darkness? Only one thing. The same thing it took for Mary. Call it a wild imagination or call it faith. Either way, it requires eyes that see the invisible. Ears that hear something in the silence. Hands that extend in the direction of the irrational, the impossible, the unthinkable. I pause, breathe deeply, strike the match. I light the first candle. The flame leaps up, flickers, steadies itself. Across the room the small light reappears, a reflection in the window. The solitary candle becomes two and in the window beside it three and then four. The candle of hope. Hope that the darkness will not always envelop the earth. Hope that the promise will be fulfilled. Hope that each heart that still listens will echo the whispered assent of the simple girl: Be it done unto me according to thy word. Amen. Copyright 1995, 2021

H enry James, who lived in New England where they have four distinct seasons and the highest temperature they ever get is around 80 degrees, once said, “Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." Obviously, Henry James never had pound cake. I can not say – or type – “pound cake” without seeing a rolling montage of Thanksgiving dinners, baby showers, .birthday parties, funeral meals, and class reunions at all of which the lowly pound cake reigned over every other delicacy of whatever kind. Dense and slightly sweet, and, if baked correctly, golden brown with narrow fissures breaking across its domed top, pound cake is the quintessential Southern dessert. It may well be the metric by which a Southern cook is measured. Many years ago, Katherine and I convinced Grannie to let us enter her pound cake in the Homemaking Exhibit at the Kiwanis Ogeechee Fair. After numerous protestations that her cake couldn’t win any contests, that it probably “wouldn’t be fittin’ to eat,”, and that she was only agreeing to do it because she loved us so much, she made the cake and, in keeping with the fair rules, wrote out the recipe she knew by heart on a 3"x5" index card. Katherine and I delivered the cake and recipe card to the Homemaking Pavilion on Sunday afternoon and on Monday night we could hardly wait to get to the Fairground where we found a shiny blue ribbon hanging over Grannie’s cake. That year for Christmas we had the blue ribbon and the recipe card framed. It hung on Grannie’s kitchen wall until Alzheimer’s took away her ability to live alone. After Grannie died and her daughters were going through her things, Aunt Linda called to tell me that the blue ribbon was mine. I hung it on my own kitchen wall and looked at it daily, remembering the veiny hands and knotted fingers as they moved slowly over that index card. One Saturday morning I decided to make Grannie’s pound cake. I’d never made one (But, then, I’d never made much of anything else at that point.) and I couldn’t say with any certainty what possessed me to try that day. I took the recipe down and gathered from my pantry and refrigerator all the necessary ingredients, noting the special instructions about adding the eggs one at a time and alternating wet and dry ingredients to make the batter. It was at that moment that I realized the rest of the recipe was on the back of the card and, of course, invisible. The panic was quick and thick. I imagined myself pouring out the batter and never mentioning to a living soul that I had attempted such an arduous task. But then I had a thought: Aunt Linda would know what came next. So, I called. No one answered. Fortunately, Aunt Cookie did. She walked me slowly through the pan preparation and the batter pouring and the actual baking of the pound cake and I felt that I would die from gratitude. I took a big chunk of pound cake to church the next morning, a gift to Cookie for coming through for me. I left it in the car and the aluminum foil was warm when I handed it over to her. “Please,” I urged, “let me know what you think about it.” A few hours later she called, proclaiming, “It was delicious!” I was simultaneously relieved and proud. And, then, she added, “It tasted just like Mama’s.” The five most beautiful words in the English language. Copyright 2021

First grade, then second, all the way through fifth was, quite simply, one day of amazement after another. The low, flat mid-20th century architecture that was Mattie Lively Elementary School presented not a clue to the casual observer that within its red brick walls astonishment turned to wonder, magic conjured by nothing more extraordinary than chalkboards and tempera paint and construction paper. Most mesmerizing of all were the science documentaries in which time lapse photography was utilized to demonstrate how the moon moved across the sky, how tadpoles turned into frogs, how a bud became a rose. In the necessary darkness, my slack-jawed marveling went unnoticed. Leaning forward so far as to almost touch the head of the classmate in front of me, I believed if I stared hard enough, held my eyes open without blinking that I could identify the very moment of metamorphosis. The moment when what was became what is. To be honest, I could not have articulated that at 8 or 9. But, then, I didn’t need to. It was enough to feel it. The weather today was especially balmy for early November. The sky was Crayola cornflower blue and it was warm enough that I had to change from long sleeves. The breeze was just substantial enough to ruffle the leaves still dangling on the trees, but the landscape was, otherwise, quiet and still. Leaving the stands of pine trees behind as I walked, I heard a popping sound, syncopated and soft. Acorns, I realized, were falling. Into the dusty red clay, they bounced like balls, landing haphazardly in piles or rolling into seclusion as if acorns can be introverts. Some had been crushed by wide truck tires, spreading their pumpkin-colored insides across the road like Rorschach inkblots. Yesterday they were not falling. Yesterday they were dangling from the scrub oaks that line the road, bright green ball bearings wearing jaunty berets. And yesterday they were not a time machine carrying me back to childhood and dim classrooms where I first learned to stare at things that are alive, that morph from one stage to another imperceptibly. I stopped and stared. I had questions. At what moment did they start letting go? Was it sometime in the night when the temperature dropped? Did they shiver and lose their grasp? Was it this morning as the sun began drying up the dew? Did their stems release them like a hot pot handle? The answers afforded us by falling acorns and budding roses are not always satisfactory. They tell us that clear lines – a sure before and a fixed after – are not always knowable. Which stitch transforms a skein of yarn into a sweater. Which brick makes a wall. Which word, which touch, which smile turns a friend into a lover. Falling acorns and budding roses are here, it seems, to remind us that life, not just elementary school, is meant to be one day of amazement after another. They teach us, often in the dimness where shapes are smudged and sounds are muffled, that we would do well to lay aside our stop watches and simply watch. Copyright 2021

It was October. The first Monday. It was damp and cold and my Girl Scout uniform was not nearly warm enough, not even with the matching sweater. My beret was bobby-pinned on or it would have flown off in the wind. Marching bands stood tuning up and tractors sat idling as the crepe paper streamers on the floats they would pull fluttered in the building breeze. Tiny ballerinas shivered even as their mamas shoved their arms into jackets that would cover their pale pink leotards. Politicians poised on the backs of convertibles, floor room shiny and driven by men in white shirts and ties. Horses whinnied with impatience. Marching in the Fair Parade was no small thing in those days and so it didn’t matter that I was freezing, that my eyes were watering. I trembled from both the cold and the anticipation. There was also a little fear that I would falter in the very important task of carrying the flag. There were no flag holsters in those days, so I would have to carry its entire weight – held against my right hip, right hand over left hand on the staff – the entire mile and a half of the parade route. Past the First Baptist Church and the Courthouse and Piggly Wiggly and the library. Past the cheering spectators filling the sidewalks, classmates and family and people who worked in the stores where Mama and I bought shoes and fabric and notions. Past my entire world. And then a man from the Kiwanis Club was waving us out into the street. I lifted the flag, tucked the staff against my side, and joined the parade. The parade ended in what some of us, after all these years, still call the Rose’s parking lot. The floats, engineered by people with no knowledge of engineering, were looking a little ragged. The fake columns leaned precariously and the beauty queens (who had naively used those columns to steady themselves as they bounced down Main Street) tottered dangerously on their high heels as they reached for solid ground. The politicians’ broad smiles had worn off completely and the ballerinas were whining. It is always odd that when I think about the parade (And I have been thinking about it for 50 years.). I don’t remember the parade proper. Except for the vague recollection of my family’s voices calling out to me from somewhere around the old post office, the images that resurface every year about this time are always the before and after. Like those juxtaposed photos in women’s magazines (or, more accurately these days, on social media), there is no record, no evidence of the period in-between, the moments after the before and before the after. It saddens me. But should it? Can a 12-year-old know anything about paying attention to the moment? Can a girl on the edge of adolescence know anything about how quickly time passes, how soon now becomes then? Can I, with all the benefit of what we call experience, predetermine what I will remember? Can any of us? That we remember at all, that somehow our brains enable us to retrieve sights and sounds and smells on demand, as well as to be suddenly attacked by them from behind, is nothing short of a miracle, is nothing less than absolute magic. The parking lot emptied out. My wrists ached from the weight of the flag. When we got home Mama gave me aspirin and put me to bed. Copyright 2021

It was pure serendipity. That a meeting would actually be held in person, rather than via ZOOM, was the first indication of magic. That that meeting would be held in Statesboro, just minutes up the road from Sandhill, and that my friend Lea would be one of the attendees was the second. The final sign, the abracadabra-point-the-wand-in-my-direction sign, was that this meeting, this in-person meeting, would be held the week of my birthday. And not just any birthday. The big birthday. The one for which the government sent me, months in advance, that brand new red, white, and blue card that announces to all the world, especially medical personnel everywhere, that I am old. The one for which I would be very grateful to experience some magic. Lea and I have known each other for over twenty years. We’ve known each other long enough that we can invite ourselves to spend the night at each others’ homes. Enough to know that the self-invitation will always be greeted with a “Yes! When will you be here?” And, since between the two of us there have been 40 birthdays, enough to learn the exact kind of celebration that produces wide smiles and deep sighs of gratitude. I could not wait for her to get to Sandhill. She arrived with a smile that lit up the backyard, with a pat on the head for Owen, and with stories, lots of stories. She also brought birthday gifts including a small ivory hand-thrown pottery planter with shallow bumps along the rim that felt like Braille, like words in a language I did not know but wanted – no, not just wanted, but needed – to learn. We went to supper at one of my favorite restaurants – magically open because I thought they were closed on Mondays. We sat outside and let the conversation of the other diners, the clink of silverware, and the sound of the traffic merge into an incantation for peace and well-being. We talked and talked and talked until I understood why we use the phrase “catching up” for describing conversation between people who have not been together in a while, until I knew we were traveling abreast of each other, moving at the same pace and seeing the same things, at least for one night. Back at Sandhill, after we’d walked outside to see where I’d hung her Christmas present from last year, the sign made of driftwood and shells that says Home, and to watch for a few minutes the clouds backlit by the moon, Lea said, “Years ago – I think it must have been for a big birthday. – I texted you to wish you a happy birthday and you responded with, ‘The view from here is beautiful.’ At first, I thought you were talking about the age, the place you were in life. And I thought about what a great thing that was to say, to feel. “And, then, I realized you were talking about where you were physically. That you were standing on a balcony looking out at the ocean and the moon.” We both laughed. I remembered that birthday. Remembered it well. Remembered standing on that balcony alone and watching the moon tremble as though it, too, was afraid of what came next. I would have called the view from where I stood hard. I would have called it disappointing. I would have called it unclear and scary. I would not have called it beautiful. In retrospect, though, I would . And I do. I have lost enough, gained enough, seen enough in the ensuing fifteen years to understand that the view from every birthday is beautiful. That standing on a balcony with the vastest of the ocean at my feet, that waking to sunshine over a field of cotton wet with dew, that simply breathing and walking around is enough. Copyright 2021

It was Monday night. It was the first game of the three game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Braves had managed to win only one game of a three-game series against the San Francisco Giants and had seen their lead in the National League East dwindle to one paltry game. If it wasn't what the manager calls a must-win, it was pretty close. The Diamondbacks led 3-2 going into the top of the 5th inning and, then, as magic tends to happen, the Braves started getting hits. Not just hits, doubles. One right after the other. And then there was a home run that went nearly 500 feet. At the end of the inning the Braves led 9-3. Not much happened over the next three innings and by the top of the ninth, most of the Diamondback fans had departed, leaving only Braves fans, of which there was an unusual number, in the bleachers at Chase Field. The cameraman panned the crowd to land on one of baseball’s archetypal images: a father and son cheering on their team which, in this case, was the Braves. The little boy had a full face, a short haircut, and a body that still bore the softness of childhood. The little boy was standing close to his father and his forearm pumped repetitively even as his face, his tired little face, reflected no animation. He could have been the only one in the stadium doing the tomahawk chop, but it would not have mattered. He was locked in. The camera stalled and stayed on the little boy as Chip Caray noted, “Look at that little fellow. He’s still chopping. Bless his heart.” And with that, I burst into tears. I have found, over the years, that my tears are not always predictable or even appropriate. I have cried on meeting newborn babies for the first time and on viewing television commercials during the Olympic Games. I have shed tears over the deaths of people I loved and of imaginary people in books. I have cried in joy and in anger, in empathy and in frustration, in awe and in exhaustion. But, before now, I have never cried over a little boy doing the tomahawk chop in Phoenix. After catching my breath and wiping my eyes, it felt important to figure out why I’d found myself weeping. I realized, after eliminating fatigue and hunger and loneliness as possible triggers, that I hadn’t been crying for the little boy, but for myself. I have been the fan who stood cheering long after it made any difference at all. I have been the one to refuse to leave early, clinging to the truth that, as Yogi Berra said during the pennant race of 1973, “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” I have been the one in the near-empty stadium chopping, chopping, chopping, wedded to the ridiculous idea that my arm would make the difference. It’s funny the power we think we have, the power we long to have. The Braves won by a final score of 11-4. The little boy and his chopping had nothing to do with it, of course, but it kinda felt like he and it did. It kinda felt like he had single-handedly, with his soft little arm, held the Diamondbacks at bay. It kinda felt like I had, with my tears, helped just a little. Bless our hearts. Copyright 2021

Many years ago I was in Atlanta to attend a continuing legal education seminar, a requirement of the State Bar for maintaining my license to practice law. The seminar, like all of them in the days before ZOOM, was held in a large hotel ballroom and I, as I always did when possible, had found a seat on the back row. The first presenter was well into his sixty-minute talk when a distinguished gentleman entered the room and took the empty seat beside me. I pegged him immediately as an “Atlanta lawyer” – tall, nice-looking, graying at the temples, wearing an expensively-cut dark suit. We nodded at each other and I turned my attention back to the speaker. At the conclusion of the session, as people pushed their way to the coffee at the back of the room, the gentleman turned toward me and stuck out his hand. “George Busbee,” he offered as way of introduction and, thanks be to every adult who had ever pressed upon me the importance of good manners, I took his hand and replied, “Kathy Bradley.” George Busbee served two terms as Governor of Georgia, almost the entire time I was in college and law school. He was on the ballot in my very first election. And now he was sitting next to me like just another lawyer needing continuing education hours. I couldn’t have told you a single thing about his tenure or his policies, but – because Daddy liked it so much – I remembered his campaign slogan: “A work horse, not a showhorse.” I couldn’t wait to get home to tell Daddy. That memory came back to me this morning as I walked. It seems an improbable thing to have come to my mind as I scuffed through the dust and paused occasionally to reach over the ditch for a wildflower, but it makes perfect sense if you know that a little over a half-mile from home I got a glimpse of beautyberry. I love beautyberry. It is the prima donna of wild plants. Its fluorescent purple berries shout from amidst the green undergrowth, “Look at me! Look at me!” And one can’t help looking. The stems are long and slender and the leaves, a startling yellow-green, cup the globes of berries as though making of them an offering. It is the kind of plant that would light up a room. The kind of plant for which tall, elegant vases are made. But also the kind of plant that I no longer approach with anything other than a camera. I have tried over and over to bring beautyberry inside and every time, no matter how gently I trim the stem or pinch the leaves, the berries drop from those stems in a purple avalanche leaving nothing behind but a good switch for a disobedient child. The beautyberry flirts and preens and teases. It infatuates and lures, but that is all it does. The beautyberry is a showhorse. As I stared at its plumage and absorbed that reality, I remembered George Busbee. The work horse. When it comes to public servants, the work horse is what I want. It is what I, when I was a public servant, tried to be. I don’t have much use for a showhorse. The afternoon wore down and I felt a question rise: Why can’t something be both? I did not much care for the question nor for the voice that whispered it. I could not, however, ignore it. “The Atlanta lawyer that sat down next to you all those years ago,” the voice continued, “looked every bit the part of showhorse. It was only after offering his name and, with it, his story, that you identified him as a workhorse. Consider well the distinction. The beautyberry is a work horse, even if it doesn’t work for you. It grows in sandy soil. It manages to thrive among vines and palmetto scrubs. It resiliently waits for rain. The beautyberry has to be a work horse in order to survive.” I am reminded of the Buddhist koan that says the converse of a great truth is also truth. If one cannot be both a work horse and a showhorse, then it is also true that one can be both. I have absolutely no plans to bring in any beautyberry, but I have every intention of remembering its lesson with every glance. Copyright 2021

His name was Grady Waters. He was gray and slightly stooped. If he had had a wife or children I never knew it. He sat in the corner on the front row next to the wall. He wore a white dress shirt and dark pants. I couldn’t tell you anything about his tie other than he always wore one. For many years he sang in the choir of the small Pentecostal church in which I was reared, until, I think, someone shared with him what the rest of us already knew – that he couldn’t sing, that his was not a joyful noise. But it is not his white shirt or perfect attendance or inability to carry a tune that makes me remember him over 50 years later. The reason I remember Grady Waters, the reason I will tell you that he is the first saint I ever knew is this: Every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night, every night of every revival we ever had, just before the preacher strode toward the pulpit to begin the sermon, Grady Waters rose slowly from his corner, approached that same pulpit with a confident timidity, and removed the empty water glass that sat there. He left the sanctuary by the side door and, two minutes later, returned with the glass full of water. The tenderness with which he replaced that glass within reach of the preacher was the same, I am certain, as that with which the Magi made their own simple offerings to the Christ Child. I never saw anyone else take the empty glass and return it full. We were all sure that Grady Waters would do his job, fulfill his role. He did not have much in terms of wealth or power or anything else, but he had a purpose and he lived out that purpose with a faithfulness that the rest of us took for granted, a faithfulness that was not fueled by acknowledgment or gratitude or some title conferred upon him by people we called leaders, but rather an awareness of the goodness in us all. It’s been eighteen months since the world changed. Eighteen months since every job became dangerous and those that were already dangerous became frighteningly so. Since we started pointing people out for their selfless service, calling them angels and heroes. Then just when we thought the world was turning aright, it didn’t. So, here we are again, calling upon the same people to do the same impossible things. And, not just calling really, but demanding, expecting, requiring. It is in these moments that we are forced to admit that teachers aren’t angels and nurses aren’t heroes. They are simply people who are, as my pastor said last Sunday, “living into the original goodness into which we were made.” However you believe you came to be walking around in a human body, whatever you think is the source of your sentience, you were created in goodness and manifest in beauty. You were made to be a gift to the world. And in allowing that to happen, in handing yourself over to be ripped open by greedy hands, you will – like your child’s teacher smiling behind her mask, like the health department nurse standing in the sun to give you a COVID test, the doctor intubating your neighbor, like Grady Waters ever constant, ever trustworthy, ever faithful to his task – become a saint. Copyright 2021

Ponderous and clumsy like a mare waiting to foal, August arrives bearing summer’s fullness. The days have grown heavy and long and everything – the turtle I pause to watch waddle across the road, the turkey vultures lifting languidly from the carcass left lying in the ditch, even the butterfly whose bouncing from flower to flower has become more of a slide – moves slowly in the wet heat. My feet produce little more than a shuffle as I propel myself down the road, each small advance like pushing through a wall. Like a puddle that spreads to fill in a footprint, summer claws at me from the woods, the fields, the ponds. Barely restrained by the ditches and fence lines, it has filled in the gaps. All around me is green. I try to delineate each of the different shades – hunter and emerald and jade and chartreuse. I attempt to segregate the muddy greens, the clear greens, the shiny greens, to evaluate their intensity and separate then by source. Nearly drunk with heat, I walk through what feels like three dimensions of color. I am rounding the curve at the beaver pond when, out of the corner of my eye, I detect the tiniest flash of white. An eyelash, a dust mote. Turning, I see an egret – the bird we have always called a pond scoggin – folding its wings and gliding to a stop on the exposed end of a log jutting up out of the pond at slim angle. He has joined another egret, equally thin-legged and equally aloof. They turn their necks from side to side, surveying the dense greenness into which they have fallen from the clear blue sky. The two birds are the only non-green objects within my vision. Like two singular brush strokes, their whiteness sticks out, casts a shimmering reflection into the algae-covered water. The image imprints on the back of my eyelids and I think about it all the way home. So much green, so little white. Broad water, tall trees, wide spans of grass. Two skinny birds. Light in the midst of dark. At some point I start hearing the voices. Voices of everyone from my grandmother to the politician of the week holding forth on the power of a single candle in a dark room or the first glimpse of sunrise after a lonely night. Fables and parables, sermons and stories, aphorisms, axioms, and maxims of every sort testifying to the smallest light. “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” says the Chinese proverb. “All the darkness in the world,” said St. Francis of Assisi, “can not extinguish the light of a single candle.” Martin Luther King, Jr. repeated over and over, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.” Is that what it’s about? Light and darkness? I walk through the front door and the cold air seizes me. The haze of the heat evaporates as the sweat flash-freezes and my body shivers. My gratitude for air conditioning has never been greater. I get water. I sit down. The egrets accompany me. I can’t stop thinking about them, wondering why I noticed, why their small whiteness caught my attention in all that large greenness. I know why only when I see the back-to-school ads and feel myself cringe at the memory of the things my friends and I did to get noticed, to stand out from the crowd, to make our marks. I cringe because every one of those things – the clothes we wore, the styles in which we wore our hair, the music to which we listened – were all alike and served only to make us indistinguishable. We stood as a broad swath of green, not an egret to be seen anywhere. I want to run to all those little girls and middle schoolers and teenagers setting forth on their first days of school and block their paths. I want to take their sweet faces in my hands and whisper, “The secret is in the contrast, dear one. Go out there and be an egret.” Copyright 2021

In the Victorian language of flowers, the geranium symbolized happiness, good health and friendship. Its flirty little petals sprouting from the top of tall stems makes it resemble a Tootsie Pop and it comes in about as many colors. Their appearance at the local garden centers is as much an announcement of spring’s arrival as is the first daffodil. And any porch sporting geraniums is a house I’d like to visit. I kept geraniums in big clay pots on my front porch summer after summer until I figured out they just couldn’t take the direct sun. This year they swing in baskets from shepherd’s hooks planted at the corners of the screened porch: tangerine orange, hot pink, and white. The almost daily rain showers we’ve had the past month or so kept them happy for several weeks, blossoms exploding from bud tips and frilly leaves maintaining the deep green color of health. Once the showers stopped, though, I forgot I was supposed to water them. The result was a bunch of dried up Tootsie Pops. When I finally noticed the hastening demise of my flowers, I panicked. I grabbed the watering can and poured so much water into the dark black soil that the shepherd’s hooks bent forward, swaying under the extra weight. Then, with chippers in hand, I approached them to perform that most macabre of all gardening tasks, dead-heading. The wind that had accompanied all those rain showers had played chase with the fallen leaves and grass clippings at the edge of the yard, tossing bits of the detritus into the basket. I reached into the mass of dried things and realized, too late, that the wad of dead leaves and twigs clasped in my hand wasn’t leaves and twigs at all, but, rather, a nest. I quickly put it back into the basket, but not before noticing that it contained three eggs and two obviously just-hatched baby birds. The birds were each smaller than a thimble and were as ugly as a baby bird can be. One had his mouth open so wide that it obscured his entire bald head. The eggs were smaller than jelly beans. I immediately placed the nest back in the basket and jumped away, flooded by the trifecta of negative emotions – regret and anger and grief. Walking back and forth I just kept muttering, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” There is nothing so debilitating as regret. Last week included the birthday of one of my dearest friends, a friend I lost far too young to forces both nefarious and heartbreaking. On the day I was silently wishing him a happy birthday, I was also remembering that in the days after his death my only comfort was in knowing that I could remember him without regret. Through all the years of darkness, he knew he could call me and I would listen. He knew I would always make the necessary effort to be his friend. And he knew I loved him. That solace has accompanied me through every day since. It has reminded me over and over that people die, relationships change, and seasons turn, but that they can die, change, and turn without leaving behind a legacy of regret. I get to choose. Copyright 2021

I am mesmerized by what foresters call prescribed burns (as though a doctor somewhere pulled out a little white pad and scribbled on it, “Set fire to the woods.”). There is something magical in how the forest floor is turned from brown to black by the orange wand of combustion, how the low-lying smoke lingers for days, how fine is the soot of the footprints I make after venturing in a few steps. The woods along my road were burned off a few months ago. The short flames crept along the floor of the forest, rapid and silent, like a soldier crawling toward a target. They consumed the brittle pine needles from last year’s shedding and left with only a singe the vines and grass and trees that still run with sap. The fire left tall pine trees with black aprons and turned fallen limbs into large, oddly-shaped licorice sticks. It revealed the topography of the land, like a sheared sheep is left surprisingly skinny. Without the insulation of the underbrush, the calls of the hawks, the quail, the woodpeckers echoed from one side of the road to the other and the squirrels and rabbits went from being nothing more than the rustling of dried leaves to the flashes of brown and gray fur. And the trees. The trees looked taller and wider in the emptiness of the ground in which they were rooted. Pine trees in the coastal plain are watchmen, sentinels, sentries. They are Beefeaters in their tall hats and sharp swords, immovable and unassailable. A few weeks after the burn, on Father’s Day, the electricity on our road went out. One of the trees, the immovable and unassailable trees, had collapsed across the road and taken out a power line. The lengths of cable fell in coils, soft circles of deadly invisibility. The lunch I was making for Daddy and my brother went uncooked as the men in bucket trucks made their way to the fallen soldier, raising and tossing him to the side before restoring our connection to the grid, all while I wondered if the fire had killed the tree. I went walking later that afternoon. The road was tattooed with bucket truck tire treads and the flat footprints of work boots. In the ditch lay the tree, the broken end stuck into the air, splintered like jack-o-lantern teeth, its heart splayed open for all the world to see. I stopped for a moment to stare at the tree, its broken limbs and huge pieces of bark that had flaked off in the fall. If I had wondered whether the fire had something to do with the falling of the tree, staring into the exposed trunk answered the question. The tall, majestic watchman was dead long before it hit the power lines, weeks and probably months before it thudded to the ground. The tree had rotted from the inside out. The fire had only provided the push. Just like so many people. Men and women who, like the tree, stand tall and proud, who proclaim with no small amount of fanfare that they are invincible. People who convince others to depend upon them, to give them control based upon what looks like strength and stability. People who, all the while, are dying on the inside, whose spirits have failed, whose hearts are decayed. When something, like a prescribed burn, comes sweeping through their forests they will always, always, always fall. I don’t know what destroys the inside of a tree, but I know well what eats up the heart of a man, the spirit of a woman. It is lethargy and selfishness. It is disloyalty and pride. It is believing that one can not fall. And finding, far too late, that a prescribed burn is on its way. Copyright 2021

I am the observer. From the back door I watch a gray squirrel hurry on tiny feet across the ground to the bird seed that has fallen from the feeder. He rises to his haunches and pushes his treasure into his mouth with claw-like hands. The male cardinal who was already there continues pecking at his breakfast, but flies away at the arrival of the blackbird. I am the observer. From the kitchen window I see the turtle paused on the edge of what will eventually be a flower bed. He is almost hidden in the grass that needs cutting. The tracks he has left in the road on his way to the pond are wide and smooth and symmetrical. He is nonplused by Owen’s attention, the cold nose poked at his head, the dancing from side to side. He pauses long enough for Owen to lose interest and then slowly, ever so slowly, moves on. I am the observer of the barn swallows nesting on the front porch, the black snake writhing his way under the shrubbery, the black swallowtail perching on the verbena at the edge of the road. I am always the observer. Until today. Today I am the observed. Across the field the doe stands at the very edge of the cultivated rows, the long deep forest of hardwoods within an easy leap. Her fawn is a few feet away nibbling at the tiny cotton plants that have just pushed up through the crust of soil. The doe is not eating. Not right now. Her ears, two leaf-shaped satellites, are raised and she is looking in my direction. It is at least a hundred yards to where I stand, still and silent in the middle of the road. I have stopped to watch them, the doe and the fawn, and instead find myself being watched. I know that the slightest movement on my part will send the deer hurrying to cover, so we – the doe and I – find ourselves paused like a movie frame. In the space between us a question hovers in the heavy summer heat: Are you a danger? I am not, but the mother does not know that. She knows only that I am different and in her world different can not be trusted. Eventually my curiosity overwhelms me. How much movement can I make without the doe bolting? I lift one arm from my side and place it on my hip. That answers the question. She turns and steps like a ballerina into the brush, glancing back only long enough to make sure that the fawn follows and to watch me for one last second. I do not immediately resume my walk. I stare for a moment at the break in the tree line where the animals have disappeared and wonder what it meant, this brief encounter. It is not a lesson about maternal instinct or survival or co-existence. It is a lesson about what happens when something, someone different comes close enough to see me. I have confronted and been confronted by deer hundreds of times. They have darted into the beam of my headlights and into the sides of my cars. They have scurried into the branch when I’ve opened the back door suddenly. They have, in herds of 10 or 20, raced across the fields with the grace of a corps de ballet. But they have not, like this doe, simply walked away. And in walking, not running, she reminded me of this: You run when you are afraid. You run when staying is too hard. You run not necessarily knowing where you’re going, but knowing it is too dangerous to stay. Walking away is different. It is fueled by strength, not fear. It is prompted by a clear notion of where you are and where you want to go. And it always allows for one final look back. Copyright 2021

My friend lives in Texas now, not far from that place with the silos. She tells stories with her paintings while I paint pictures with my stories. She is a mother and a grandmother. She has lived in Africa and has survived breast cancer. I am, I have done none of those things. Still, we are friends of the deepest kind: we tell each other scary things, embarrassing things, painful things and we know that in the telling the fear, the embarrassment, the pain is lessened. Maybe just a little, but enough that matters. Our nearly 57-year-old friendship began in Brownies. (I am frequently reminded that so many good things in my life can be attributed to Girl Scouts.) We didn't go to the same elementary school or the same church. Our parents didn't know each other. There was little in that world of three-fingered promises and sit-upons that would have predicted the longevity of our relationship. And, yet, here we are. Held together not just by memories, though they are many and strong, but by something else. I wish I knew what to call it. I read something the other day about the sociological premise that a human being cannot really know more than 150 people. That is the number, arbitrary it seems to me, that is supposed to define a personal community. I am not a social scientist – though I took enough college hours in psychology, sociology, and political science to qualify for membership in the social science honor society (just another indication that being educated in something does not make you one). I am not a social scientist, but I know enough to respectfully disagree with the 150. I think it might make better sense to say that a person can know – really know and care about – no more than 150 people within a particular community. And I have many communities. There is my large and widespread family. There is the church in which I was raised and the church of which I am now a member. There is my Wesleyan community and my law school community. There is the community formed those three summers I worked in Dahlonega for the Governor’s Honors Program and the one formed those eight summers at church camp. There is the community formed around practicing law for 38 years and that strange, difficult to describe community that has been called framily – people to whom I am bound by neither blood nor law, but who treat me as though I am. And there is that community of which my Texas friend is a member – childhood friends. As happens so often, in the writing of the words I think I have figured out what to call it, that thing that holds me to my childhood friend in Texas, my church camp friend in Indiana, my college suitemate in Spain. It is recognition. At some point in our relationships we looked at each other and saw ourselves. And then we held on for dear life. It would break my heart to think that could happen only 150 times. That being moved by the death of someone else’s parent, being excited for the graduation of someone else’s child, being angered by someone else’s betrayal would be limited to fewer people than serve in the House of Representatives. Friends may be the one thing about which I am greedy. And, in this case, greed is good. Copyright 2021

It is the season of celebration. The season during which refrigerators are covered in invitations. The season for parties and gifts and congratulations. The season for the rites and rituals that hold a society together. Graduations, weddings, Mother’s and Father’s Days. It is the season for acknowledging the cycles and circles of life. A couple of weeks ago, this boy I know graduated from high school. He put on the silly outfit that no 18-year-old in his right mind would put on for any reason other than to make his mama happy. He smiled for the photos and said thank you to every single expression of congratulations. And, at the party to which his parents invited more than just a few people, he gave a speech. I was at that party. Just as I had been at the hospital the night he was born. A lot happened in the eighteen years between. He and I, along with his mother and sister, burned thousands of miles on I-95 between Baltimore and south Georgia. We rode bicycles, boats, and pirate ships. We walked streets in big cities and small towns and hiked nature trails in multiple states. And we told stories, lots of stories. Most of them true. As I listened to his speech I remembered the Orioles game at Camden Yards, the outdoor movie in Little Italy, and the National Aquarium where the little lights on his tennis shoes twinkled like stars as he ran up and down the ramps. I remembered trampoline hockey and dance parties in his Nana’s living room. I remembered looking for seashells on St. Simons Island and deer tracks in my backyard. Mostly I remembered the stories, the quiet moments when it was just the two of us sharing words. But about that speech ... What the boy said was that in the lead-up to graduation all of it had seemed to be a whole bunch of unnecessary hoopla, that he wasn’t really sure why he needed to attend the ceremony, why there needed to be a party. His eyes, he told us, were already on college and graduating from high school didn’t seem to be too big a deal. Until he looked at all the people at the party. All the people who had made the effort to come share the moment with him. All the people who were more than party guests. All the people who had helped him become who he is (and who will, I might add, continue to do so). It was then, he said, that he realized the why behind the silly outfit and all the photos and the big party. What I think he was trying to say is that none of us accomplishes anything on our own, that it is in community that we find the strength, the motivation, the tenacity to follow through on the promises we make to ourselves and to others. In the rituals we perform we give heft to that reality. The boy is a surfer and his parents had framed a large photo of him standing on the beach and looking into the sun, surfboard tucked under his arm. They asked each of us at the party to sign the photo. Looking at those signatures – family, friends, friends who are family – I was reminded of all the things to which one puts a signature, the symbol of identity and loyalty: diplomas, marriage and birth certificates, guest books. And, now, photos of young surfers. In the aftermath of a pandemic that stole so many moments of celebration and community it might make sense to bypass the parties, send regrets to all the weddings, forego the silly outfits. It could be tempting, would be easy to make no day special, create no occasion out of anything. But it would mean ignoring the truth of what brought us through those long hard months with our humanity intact – the anticipation of being together again. It is the season of celebration. Let us celebrate. Copyright 2021