This must be the place

It’s 11:16 a.m. Wednesday. Sitting in the lobby of the Dunes Inn & Suites on Tybee Island, Georgia, I can finally collect myself and write this column, seeing as the Wi-Fi is only good in the lobby and not the motel room (#132) at the back of the property. 

A unique kind of holiday

Every year of our girlhood, my sister and I woke up early on Thanksgiving Day, sat at the kitchen barstools in our pajamas and helped my mom break up cornbread and biscuits so we could make my great grandmother’s dressing recipe. Throughout the day, the house would fill with smells of turkey, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. Sometime mid-morning, my grandparents would drive up from Travelers Rest, S.C., to join in on the festivities. 

No sleep until January: Retailers rejoice over bustling holiday season

The holiday shopping season tends to be a stressful time for shoppers as well as retailers with large crowds, long lines, mounting tension and explosive tempers as everyone is in a rush to get everything on their list. 

This must be the place: Won’t somebody tell me what I’m doing here? Won’t somebody tell me where I’m going?

Finishing up my scrambled eggs and black cherry yogurt, I washed the dishes in the small sink. Dried off my hands and took another sip of my coffee. Mosey over to my ragged desk in my humble abode, in front of a dusty window with a slight view of Russ Avenue in downtown Waynesville. 

My annual ritual of shopping local

Let’s face it, most people either can’t wait to begin their holiday shopping for loved ones or they just dread the whole spectacle. Put me in the camp of those who has found a way to enjoy it.

Easter then and now

Growing up, my family had a little blue and white camper at Ocean Lakes Campground in Surfside Beach, South Carolina. It was our go-to place for every vacation. My sister and I slept on bunk beds built into the side of a wall. We had no phone or TV, but we ate a lot of watermelon and played board games for hours. 

This must be the place: There’s too much in this world I can’t seem to shake

I live in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Waynesville. Been here going on eight and a half years. Aside from my shelves of old books (many already read, most to get to, someday) and vinyl records, there are a handful of old guitars in the corner, of which I’ll pull one or two out around my third beer of the evening, usually strumming some uplifting chords, either through memory or by way of simple curiosity along the fretboard.

This must be the place: Turn your head to the cries of loneliness in the night

Stepping out of my truck, it was a cold wind rolling off the nearby mountains late Monday afternoon. A stiff breeze pushed across Lake Junaluska as I took the first strides of my four-mile run around the manmade body of water. Heavy snowflakes hit my face. I zipped the jacket closer to my chin. 

The bright spots of a pandemic holiday

I’ve started listening to Christmas music and it’s not even Thanksgiving, but you know what? It’s 2020 and anything goes. Whatever makes the world feel less heavy is allowable. 

Because one day they aren’t there

The hardest thing to get used to is the stillness. The quiet. The absolute absence of any movement at all. Day after day, everything is just as it was the day before.

His old Ford pickup is backed up to the garage, with the headlights pointing straight at our deck like a pair of eyes keeping watch. His late wife’s Subaru — which he could never bring himself to sell after she had a heart attack and passed away on the first day of their tropical vacation 10 years ago — is on the other side, nosed up to the garage door, as if hoping to gain entry. Between them is the golf cart he rode every day down the steep driveway, and then up the road to fetch his mail, with our chihuahua mix keeping pace and barking furiously as he chased along inside our fenced-in yard.

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