On Sunday 1/12/14 Bill and I went out to Grammy’s Donuts. The little place, down at the end of our street, was hopping at 10 am, staffed with Asian and African American and white staff, some of the couples at the tables were also interracial. Great prices and very friendly place. When Bill went to pay, he asked if he should leave the tip at the table and the waitress asked if this was his first time there. He said his dad (as I walked up) had been there but he had not. She said “that’s your daddy?” with a warm smile. Because he was a first timer, he got a paper bag with two free donuts. (And as Bill is not a big fan of donuts, I scored them!). Bill and I talked afterward about the beauty of small businesses and how they can do little favors like that for customers.

After Bill and Bailey said adieu, I decided to drive over to the coast and enjoy the warm Sunday afternoon sunshine, 63 degrees on a very blue sky day with low humidity. The sky was reflected in the water, and for the first time in my short history here, the Gulf itself became a lovely light shade of blue.

At one point I got up from my folding chair to check out some movement in the water close to the beach. It turned out to be a small swirl of water as the changing tide rode over a small sand bar. It looked as if some fish might be churning in the shallow water and a fellow and his grandson came down to where I stood and asked if it was  redfish. We got talking. He introduced himself. He asked if I was visiting. When he heard my story, he told me about some local sights to take in, included in these were Mobile Alabama and an artsy little community outside Mobile called Fair Hope. He described a great restaurant near Pass Christian owned by one of the Cuevas family members.

We were looking out at the Gulf and my new host told me that what I thought was a barrier island, was actually a man-made reef post hurricane Katrina (piles of refuse taken out and dumped there to create a habitat for sea life). The reef is named after a local Congressman Gene Taylor, who was defeated by “one of those wing nut Tea party people”. I immediately felt all the more welcome. He described the new tea party congressman as another “empty suit”. Gene Taylor apparently lives in the Bay St Louis area, “a Democrat but very independent.”

In the full light of day you could see the moon rising in the east.  His grandson was getting a little anxious to move on. I mentioned that I was looking forward to doing some fishing but knew next to nothing about salt water fishing. He told me that he has a boat that he starts to take out in April and has a buddy who goes out more frequently and that if I were interested, he could give me a call sometime, “if nothing else you’d get a free boat ride out of it.” He pulled out his phone and asked for my number and email address. He told me where he lived and to stop by if I was in the area. He moved to Bay St Louis after retiring about two years ago. “We love it here.” He had lived for 60 some years in Hattiesburg, “100 miles up the road.” He introduced me to his grandson and then they went back up the beach to retrieve their bikes.

When I finally turned to leave, the light was somehow brighter, the sun warmer. It was still January.

The flight attendant at the blizzard-encircled airport called out “Passenger Sullivan, Gulfport”.  He then called out the names of other folks presumably waiting there as well.  Some of my fellow travelers were going to places like Cancun.  I thought that might be a good new name: Passenger Sullivan Gulfport. As I had given myself a 90% probability of not being able to leave that day (hundreds of flights had been cancelled and I had volunteered to be bumped), when he summarily took my bag and checked it, I looked at him in surprise and asked “what do I do now?”.  He looked at me and said, “Your bag is gone, go to your gate.”    My gift to the unknown standby would remain unrequited, the world would move forward, I was leaving town as planned.

As soon as we gained altitude and broke through the clouds, the rest of the trip was all bathed in sunshine.  In the final leg of the trip, I was the aisle seat completion of a threesome, my fellow passengers being a grandmother returning home to the Gulf Coast after the holidays, and a young psychologist who was interviewing the next day for an internship at a hospital in Biloxi.  The two were talking quietly, as quietly as one does at 30,000 feet, when I recognized the name of the hospital that the psychology student mentioned.  All it took to join the conversation was to ask if I had heard the name of the hospital correctly.  Bingo.  We were an instant small group of three, as transient as transient can be, hitting it off.  Conversation drifted into clinical matters, new approaches to work with trauma, and the grandmother, a long time resident of the coast, began to talk about Katrina, and Camille before that.  The plane began to descend, the sun was now starting to set.  The plane banked and both the long time resident and myself, very short time resident, pointed out the barrier islands, the Gulf, the beaches below.  The student murmured that this would be a nice place to spend her internship year.

The long time resident had been talking about visiting property she had in Pass Christian, three months after Katrina.  She recalled driving out to the property along the coast, and seeing that there were no buildings in sight.  When she got out of the car, she realized that there were no birds in view, that there was no sound at all, other than the wind.

The sun had by now nearly set, a deep crimson on the horizon.  The long time resident was glad to be back home, the student was excited about her interviews the next day, and I was relieved to have completed the day’s journey, needing now only to get the cab for the final 30 miles along the coast road back to Bay St Louis.  We bid adieu to each other.  There was a new lightness to the evening, to the immediacy of the moment, to the possibility of connection in the most uncertain of times.

On Tuesday 1/7/14 while waiting for a flight out of Rochester, a flock of geese flew west into strong headwinds, straight across the abandoned looking runway. They were flying at 7 miles per hour, about forty feet above the pavement. They were not wearing their usual leather helmets nor were they in any obvious radio communication.

You hit the ground running, because the ground itself, separate from you, is running.  Sometimes in your direction.  There are those other times when, at the moment one foot or another makes first contact, you discover the ground moving hard to your left, and it takes great effort to remain upright. 

We all fall down from time to time, tumbling, rolling in the direction toward which the ground travels, not necessarily the direction desired.  “Here we are,” we say to ourselves, suddenly awake in that moment. 

There are those other times, perhaps on a typically overcast Sunday afternoon in this part of Western New York, when the sentiment is more hum drum.  Like some imagined Scandinavian fellow looking out on the diminishing light of winter, thinking perhaps “Here today, gone tomorrow.”  A phrase useful for repeating as necessary.  It gives the reassurance, the predictability, of an unavoidably benign commercial break.

It’s been a tumultuous Season, the one just passed, the one that early winter waves at from the rear view mirror, winter behind the driver’s seat, starting its own run slowly, emerging from deep solstice.   

We move away from an unexpected and far too early loss within the family.  We move away, as well, from a close call, a six second stopping of the heart, and a blessed recovery, a steady recovery, keeping pace, keeping the rhythm of a life giving pulse. 

2013 was, we are about to say, the year  we bought a second home, as if we were rich, as if we knew what we were doing.  A home on the North Coast,  and a home on the South Coast.  The differences are dramatic.  And when someone asks, “So are you going to live there?”, we hedge.  “We’ll see,” we say, offering little comfort for such uncertainty.

The other day I saw something I had never seen before:  two robins in the backyard of the house in the North.  The temperature was in the 20’s.  They should have left with all the other robins a few months ago.  What were they doing there?  They looked busy, uncomplaining, going about things like nobody’s business.

Coming out of a professional office building early this morning, in the vaulted space of the lobby, the management was playing one of the famous crooners’ rendition of “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays.”  Because of the large and mostly empty room at that moment, the singer’s voice had a slight echo quality, dream-like, haunting, in search of an audience.