Tag Archives: Reflection

The Solitary Flag

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“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” —Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826). Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States.

At the far end of the deck, beyond the flowers and conversation, the flag flew. The mountain breeze caught it softly, lifting and releasing it against the deep green of the forest. There was something almost reverential about its solitude.

Time was it would have had company. A flag flying on the opposite end. Two in the middle. And spanning the entire 70-foot deck, bunting—the classic pleated red, white, and blue fanned ones that unfurl patriotism, national unity, and civic belonging.

After all, this time was different. It was special. It was unlike any Fourth of July that has come before. We were not simply marking another birthday. We were celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Two hundred and fifty years. It is an astonishing span of time, and I suspect most Americans, if they paused to think about it at all, felt at least a quiet sense of gratitude for having lived to witness such an anniversary.

I did.

Ordinarily, I would have looked for something even bolder than bunting and traditional flags to mark the occasion. After all, I enjoy celebrations of almost every kind. Give me the first tomato from the garden, a birthday, an anniversary, a hummingbird’s return, a friend’s good fortune, or even a pie that slices perfectly, and I can usually find a reason to raise a glass or gather people around the table. Celebration comes naturally to me.

This year, however, I couldn’t muster up more than one solitary flag flying in the northeast corner of our deck. Somehow that seemed enough.

If you are tempted to think that I’m less than patriotic, you would be mistaken. I love this country deeply. My family has lived on this soil for generations. Some of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution. Others answered their country’s call in wars that followed. Their sacrifices are woven into my family’s story, just as surely as they are woven into the story of our nation.

Perhaps that’s why I found myself standing on the deck, looking toward the flag, wondering why my heart felt quieter than usual.

The answer, I think, had been unfolding for days.

It had not been building toward any single event. Iran and the United States had exchanged military strikes, then edged toward a ceasefire. Venezuela’s government and Washington were trading threats over what might come next. Russia’s war in Ukraine ground on into another season, no closer to resolution than it had been the season before. And closer to home, even Greenland—a name I never expected to hear in a conversation about American power—had become a subject of dispute over sovereignty and strategic interest. Not all of these were wars in the traditional sense. But each was a test of what a nation is willing to risk, and what it is willing to say out loud that it wants.

What surprised me was not the speed of events.

It was the speed with which many of us seemed to move on.

I searched and listened for conversations at stores and among friends. I expected arguments. I expected anxiety. I expected outrage or relief—something to suggest that Americans were wrestling with the gravity of what had happened and were asking the tough questions.

Had military action become the only option? Were the stated objectives achieved? What might the long-term consequences be—for everyone involved?

Why weren’t more of us asking those questions?

Instead, I encountered what felt like an extraordinary calm.

Life simply continued. People packed restaurants. Families headed to the beach. Neighbors mowed their lawns. Social media filled with photographs of backyard cookouts, grandchildren chasing sparklers, fresh peaches, birthday cakes, and sunsets.

I smiled at many of those photographs. Some of them were my own, on Facebook.

Gary and I watered flowers. Ruby ran around the yard. We welcomed Gary’s daughter and her family into our home.

We did all those things and more. Life, after all, does not suspend itself because the world has become uncertain.

Yet a question continued to follow me from room to room.

When did war become something we simply live around?

I found myself looking for the national conversation I remembered from years ago. Not agreement. We have never agreed about war. During the Cold War, neighbors disagreed about nuclear weapons and foreign policy. During Vietnam, families argued around dinner tables. After September 11, Americans wrestled with difficult questions about security and liberty. The conversations were often messy, sometimes angry, but they happened.

But here’s why I’m uneasy now.

I grew up in a world where war mattered, not because I fought in one. I didn’t. But because nearly everyone around me had been touched by one.

As a boy growing up in the coal camps of southern West Virginia, I knew men whose lives had been interrupted by World War II. Others had served in Korea. They did not often tell long stories, but they didn’t have to. Sometimes a single sentence carried the weight of an entire lifetime. Sometimes it was a photograph on the mantel. Sometimes a missing friend whose name was spoken only once each Memorial Day.

War was never merely an item in the newspaper. It lived among us. We didn’t live around it. There is a difference.

We are, after all, a nation born in revolution. Our earliest history is inseparable from war—not because Americans glorified it, but because they believed certain principles were worth extraordinary sacrifice. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. Those words were never meant to make war ordinary. If anything, they remind us that the decision to wage war should never become ordinary.

Human beings were never designed to carry the weight of every tragedy occurring on every continent every hour of every day. We still have gardens to tend, meals to prepare, dogs to walk, children to raise, aging parents to love, and neighbors who need us.

Even after the wars I’ve known had ended, the possibility of another one lingered in the background of everyday life. My generation practiced air-raid drills in school. We learned unfamiliar words like “fallout” and “radiation” before we fully understood them. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, adults spoke in quieter voices, and children sensed enough to know that the world itself seemed less certain than it had the week before.

I suppose every generation grows accustomed to the anxieties of its own time.

Perhaps ours has simply grown accustomed to too many.

Pandemics.

Political divisions.

Economic uncertainties.

Iran. Venezuela. Ukraine. Greenland. Names that, a few years ago, would each have commanded a nation’s full attention for weeks. Now they arrive almost in the same breath, take their turn in the headlines, and give way to whatever comes next.

The headlines arrive with urgency, remain for a few days, and then quietly slide aside to make room for the next emergency waiting in line.

That is not entirely our fault. Life insists upon being lived.

And yet…

Conflict—and especially the prospect of war—ought to interrupt us.

It ought to remind us that somewhere a young American is standing watch far from home. Somewhere parents are waiting for a telephone call they hope never comes. Somewhere families in Iran, or Kyiv, or towns whose names we’re only now learning, are wondering whether tomorrow will resemble yesterday or whether everything familiar will disappear before morning.

Distance may explain why we do not feel their fear. However, it should not excuse forgetting it.

I have no grand solutions to offer. I cannot tell diplomats how to negotiate or generals how to wage war. I have lived long enough to distrust simple answers to complicated questions.

What I do know is this.

A nation that celebrates its freedom should never grow so accustomed to conflict, wherever it appears and whatever name it goes by, that it no longer pauses to consider what such conflict asks of everyone it touches.

On the morning of the Fourth of July, I stepped onto our deck and looked toward the flag flying quietly in the northeast corner. It moved gently in the mountain breeze, exactly as it had moved the day before and the day before that.

I realized then that I hadn’t celebrated less because I loved my country less. I simply chose to celebrate more quietly because I found myself loving my country differently.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” That pledge was never only a declaration of independence. It was an invitation to keep asking, generation after generation, what independence should cost us and what it should demand of us.

That solitary flag in the corner of the deck was never a sign that I loved my country less.

It was a reminder that some anniversaries call not only for celebration, but for an honest reckoning with who we are, what we stand for, and what kind of nation we hope to become.

What We Tend

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Dedicated to Gary — I see without looking.

The rake lay across the heart, as if it were Cupid’s arrow. Beads of water gathered on the thermos, upright on the nearby stone bench, right beside St. Francis of Assisi. Leather gloves and pruning shears bore witness to a gardener. Gary.

I couldn’t see him, but I knew he couldn’t be far away because his seafoam, floppy hat was not on the bench with his other things.

I knew what he was up to.

The time had come for him to do what I had done down through the years since I built the garden, filling it in with tons of tan pea gravel and surrounding it with a hedge of Little Missy boxwood.

Early on, the labor of weeding was easy. The pea gravel kept unwanted growth under control and beneath the surface. But over time the Angelina Sedum, filling the two circles in the heart’s upper lobes and surrounding the Magnolia in the lower cusp’s circle, died out but not before leaping over the rings that held them. Small chartreuse-yellow clusters softened the heart but lessened its definition.

Gary, my partner—the man who now shares this mountain life me—was doing more than weeding. He had already restored the flagstone pathway leading from heart to home and back again. Now he was planting healing Ajuga that will settle in and stay within the upper rings, eventually sending up purple spikes. Now he was cleaning, making everything as pristine as the day I finished my handiwork. I sat down on the bench, surveyed the slope, and sighed,

“Well done.”

I never had any intention of building the heart garden. My late partner Allen and I had tamed our mountaintop wilderness with so many paradisiacal garden beds that we had declared a moratorium:

“No more.”

But when Allen died and I reflected on where I would scatter his ashes, as mutually agreed upon, I could not for the life of me decide upon the right spot.

We had talked about resting places on our mountaintop, usually settling on the peony garden. Once, even, Allen suggested the Koi Pond would be perfect, but amid laughter, we both exclaimed:

“Oh, no! What happens when the pond filters get cleaned.”

Then, a few months after his death, he came to me in a dream, his voice carrying into my awakening and lingering there:

“Build my heart.”

I knew where. Near the house, at road’s edge—an untamed area we thought about gardening if we ever gave our moratorium a reprieve.

I had no idea how, but I figured a little math and lots of heart would make it happen.

And it did. I marked off an area twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep, sketched a heart with a black water hose, freed the earth of weeds, and blanketed it with pea gravel running deep. For Allen’s celebration of life, I surrounded the heart with SunPatiens, alternating red and white with tears and rain. I bought a wooden Zen rake, perfect for committing Allen’s ashes to the gravel, leaving tracings that mirrored the heart’s design, growing smaller and smaller as the center neared. Later, I planted the boxwood hedge.

Thus, the heart’s beginning.

Time has been kind. But still, the heart needs Gary’s loving care and tenderness. It rests within the landscape, its presence a part of forever.

The morning after Gary finished, we decided to amble down the path, pristinely cleaned and gently curved, with the heart in clear view.

“You go ahead. I’ll be there shortly.”

“No. I’ll wait. For you.”

It was peaceful and inviting.

We talked a little less than usual, as the morning chill quickened us and a Northern Cardinal in the treetops above whistled out its own litany of little questions.

“I want your ashes to be happy here.”

They will.

And when Gary’s time comes, I’ll board the train, his weight on my lap, my hands on the box, making his final journey to Minnesota where his story began.

Once More: Glimpses of My Mother’s Hands

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On this Mother’s Day weekend, I’m thinking not only of mothers, but of everyone who has nurtured, steadied, comforted, protected, and loved—often quietly, often without recognition.

For those celebrating mothers, missing mothers, remembering mothers, or mothering others in their own ways, I wanted to share this post again.

“Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.”
–Unknown

On top of my bedroom chest of drawers is a pair of studio portraits of my father and my mother. They’re hand-colored originals, each measuring 3 inches by 4 inches, taken a year or so after my parents’ 1932 marriage. The portraits are in hinged gold frames. My father is on the left. My mother is on the right. A lamp behind illuminates both.

Right now, as I lie in bed, I’m focusing on my mother. Even though her portrait is five feet or so away, she is as clear to my sight as if she were right beside my bed. I’m glimpsing into a distant past, where memories of her linger like whispers.

She’s seated on a bench, wooden, perhaps. The artistic backdrop transports me outdoors. Trees frame the scene, a tall one behind her, their branches reaching skyward, and shorter ones in the background, on the bank of a calm body of water, perhaps a serene river.

She’s wearing a dark dress with short sleeves and a deep-cut neckline, accentuated by a glistening leaf-shaped brooch.

Her finger-waved hair, parted in the middle, falls softly just below her ears. Her eyes are dark and intense, with a gaze that seems to pierce through the image. They are surrounded by her soft, light skin tone, which provides a striking contrast. Their depth and intensity draw me in and make me wonder. What secrets lie hidden behind them? What stories and dreams do they hold? Are they looking into the depths of the world, seeking answers and understanding? Are they inviting me to join in their quest for knowledge?

Her features captivate and mesmerize me, regardless of how often I look at her portrait. Somehow, though, I seem to see my mother’s hands the most. Their contours are soft and graceful, and the fingers curve delicately, one hand gently clasping the other hand.

I see my mother’s hands the most because I know her hands the best.

My mother’s hands are engaging hands. Her hands held mine when I was but a child, and we scurried down the path behind our home where two boulders stood sentinel on either side as colored snow fell down in green and pink and blue flakes, making me believe in magic. Her hands held mine when I was a few years older, and she led me outdoors when our world was covered in snow and showed me how to lie down in stillness, moving arms and legs left and right to create angel wings, making me believe in flight. Her hands held mine a few years later when our world was green with summer and led me to lie down in warm grass, eyes skyward, discovering cloud figures, pointing out the details to one another so vividly that each could see brand new worlds of our own imaginings, making me believe in sharing visions so that others might see.

My mother’s hands are cooking hands. Her hands could transform pinto beans, onions, cornbread, buttermilk, and sweet potato cobbler into a feast, making me want it weekly. Her hands could turn a 25-pound turkey into a bronzed Thanksgiving dinner that rivaled Norman Rockwell’s iconic oil painting Freedom from Want, making art come alive in our own coal camp kitchen. Her hands could measure out with perfection all the ingredients for any dish from any cuisine that she had tasted with no need for recipe and with no need for measurements, teaching me to trust my senses.

My mother’s hands are versatile hands. Her hands could make our clothing without pattern, simply by taking our measure with her hands, making me aware that some things are more felt than seen. Her hands could cut my hair using scissors, comb, and the soft stretch of her fingers, reinforcing in my mind the marriage of expertise and craftsmanship. Her hands could take a pastry brush and turn a greased baking sheet or cake pan into a perfect likeness of Christ, making me see Holiness in the everyday.

My mother’s hands are industrious hands. Her hands could transform a grassy field into a kaleidoscope of gladiolas or dahlias, bursting with vibrant hues, teaching me to see potential in the ordinary. Her hands could hold her side of a wooden pole stretched through handles of a galvanized tub, carrying water to the garden, making me realize that many hands can carry heavy loads. Her hands could hang wallpaper with finesse, demonstrating how effort can elevate even the smallest task to art.

My mother’s hands are inclusive hands. Her hands always opened wide the door, welcoming everyone as guests into our home, making me value open-heartedness and acceptance of others, regardless of differences. Her hands always set a place for them at our modest table, making me understand that meager becomes abundance when shared with others. Her hands always held theirs in loving celebration and thanksgiving, making me a witness to the genuine communion of mankind.

My mother’s hands are nurturing hands. Her hands cared for her father and her mother in times when they could not take care of themselves, impressing on me the importance of helping others. Her hands cared for my dad and me and all my siblings, even when our hands might well have lessened the weight that she carried in hers, showing me that strength comes with sacrifice. Her hands took pine rosin to hold tight and heal the gash in my foot, the scar on my sole still a reminder of what she had learned from her mother’s hands, helping me appreciate generational know-how and wisdom.

My mother’s hands are writing hands. Her hands penned sermons when she pastored a church, making me realize that the intellect can lead the heart to be slain by the Holy Spirit. Her hands sent letters out into the world to those she knew well and to those she hardly knew at all, making me see that the power of words reaches beyond the pulpit. Her hands discovered typewriter keys late in life, determined that hand tremors would not tame her self-expression, making me realize the strength of determination.

My mother’s hands are spiritual hands. Her hands joined the hands of other warriors, praying over me as a child with polio, making me–one of the lucky, uncrippled survivors–a believer in the power of prayer. Her hands walked their way through her Bible and her commentary books–from cover to cover–more than thirty times in her lifetime, making me know the richness to be gained through close readings and research. Her hands clapped, sending thunderous applause into the Heavens to show her thankfulness and gratitude, making me know the joy of praise.

My mother’s hands are clasped hands. As she lay in her casket after her funeral, I removed her rings, took her hands and clasped one gently on top of the other, leaned in for a farewell kiss, and, then, closed the lid.

After her burial, my hands–strong from the strength of hers–released from their cage three white doves, flying upward toward the celestial realm, perhaps at that same mysterious moment when my mother found her way back home and celebrated her arrival with outstretched hands.

§ § §

Bertha Pearl Witt Kendrick (May 16, 1912–May 30, 2010)

What Goes Unseen

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“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). American essayist, naturalist, and philosopher whose Walden made him a foundational voice in the tradition of contemplative attention to the natural world.

Not long ago—on a warm spring Saturday morning, I stopped weedwhacking just long enough to rewind the twine so that I could have at it again. While I was at it, I decided to clean the underside of the guard.

That’s when I saw it.

A small, flat blade, tucked along the inner rim of the guard. It was so unassuming it might as well have been part of the plastic. Rectangular. Steel. Fixed in place with a single screw, its edge squared off and purposeful. Not sharp in the dramatic sense, not gleaming, not new—but worn to a quiet efficiency.

It didn’t move. It didn’t need to.

Set at just the right angle, it waited where the spinning line would meet it—again and again—shearing it back to proper length with each pass. No noise of its own. No flourish. Just a precise cut, a limit imposed, a boundary kept.

What struck me wasn’t what it did, but that I had never noticed it doing it.

All that time—decades of weedwhacking—this little blade had been there, keeping things in check. Silently. Reliably. Without ever asking to be seen.

But as I sat there seeing it for the first time, I was drawn—in a moment that seemed mysteriously magical—to a rhododendron in full bloom, its entire orb covered with flowers.

A burst of color rising from the green—full, rounded, almost extravagant—each cluster pressing outward as if the whole shrub could hardly contain what it was doing.
Then a single flower—open and inviting, its petals soft and flared, a quiet architecture of color and form, drawing the eye inward without insisting.

Then a blossom—closer now—where the curves deepen, the colors gather, and something more intricate begins to reveal itself.

And then—at the center—the pistil and stamen. Slender. Reaching. Dusted and deliberate.
It’s the latter I had never quite seen before—stamens bearing pollen, a pistil poised to receive it—the quiet exchange that makes the next bloom possible.

And as I sat there, momentarily mesmerized, I heard the sonorous buzzing of a bee—
thick-bodied and deliberate, its wings a blur against the stillness, its black-and-gold frame pressing into the bloom as if it belonged there, as if it knew exactly where to go and what to do.

It moved without hesitation—dipping, turning, pushing past petal and filament—gathering as it went, brushing against what needed to be brushed, carrying what needed to be carried.
Not for beauty. Not for show. But for the work.

And there, along its legs, dusted and clinging—
pollen.

A thing so small, yet so bold as to carry the world to its foretold future.

How many other things go unseen in life that keep the engines running—

The tightening at the corners of the eyes—subtle at first, almost imperceptible, until something gathers there, waiting.

A glance held a fraction longer than needed—just beyond the ordinary exchange, between two people.

The tug to say less—a quiet restraint, felt rather than reasoned, that keeps a word from tipping.

The faint sense of standing there before—a recognition unannounced.

The deep inhale that comes—slowly, almost deliberately, as if the body knows.

Ounce of Prevention. Pound of Cure.

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“Never mistake the season for the signal.”

—Poor Brentford Lee (b. 1947.) He reads the signs, trusts the seasons, studies the soil—and is not above reminding others when they’ve mistaken one for the other.

“Absolutely not!”

“You must! Please, help.”

“This time, young man, you’ve gotten yourself in so deep that I can’t help.”

“Yes, you can. I know you can. You know everything.”

I was certain my pitiful entreaties would soften Poor Brentford’s heart and move him to help.

But no. He would not be moved.

“You got yourself into this mess all by yourself.”

“And just how did I do that? Come on, Brentford Lee. Help me.”

“I can’t. Why on earth did you think you could read Mother Nature—in April, no less? Don’t you know that’s the cruelest month of all, especially in the Shenandoah Valley?”

I knew that, of course. It’s the time of year when the world seems to be coming alive again—only to have Mother Nature step in and kill that vibrant new growth with a harsh, chilling frost.

That’s why Valley folks rarely plant tender crops until mid-May, after the danger of frost has passed.

So. There. I do know those precautions.

But last year, we found ourselves in a new gardening zone. Our old Zone 6 became Zone 7, with the danger of frost ending around mid-April.

I was cautiously thrilled—but I still waited until early May, when the ground was warm and the forest fully leafed.

This year, though, my mountaintop felt different. The soil warmed sooner. The forest leafed sooner. Sooner, it turned out, was early April.

“Wait and see,” I kept telling Gary. “When the mountaintop turns green, we’re past the danger of frost.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I am. Mother Nature knows what she’s doing. She’s telling us Spring has overtaken Winter.”

And so it was. I had convinced myself. I managed to convince Gary. Together, we planted—and rejoiced in the head start.

Just as we beamed our widest smiles, we checked the weather.

Mother Nature was pulling a switcheroo.

Frost. April 22. 2:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.

27°? 30°?

The forecasts varied, but we knew: our plants were doomed unless we intervened—and maybe even then.

Poor Brentford was no help whatsoever. He had the nerve to smirk:

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

I know. I know. We should not have planted.

But we did.

And there we were, scrambling to invent a pound of cure for our poor, tender, pitiful plants—deck, patio, yard—everywhere. Pots filled with blooms that had no business showing off this early.

What followed was less a plan than an emergency deployment.

Tarps emerged from the basement. Towels defected from bathrooms. A festive tablecloth—clearly never intended for agricultural duty—was reassigned to frost prevention. Gary moved with operational urgency.

Clay pots became heat traps. Chairs became scaffolding. We hurried bewildered begonias to safer quarters. We draped. We pinned. We tucked. We hoped.

By dusk, the deck resembled an archaeological dig disguised as a linen sale. Shapes rose under fabric—domes, humps, improbable ridgelines of cotton and optimism. Each tender plant huddled beneath its improvised shelter, awaiting judgment from a sky that had seemed so kind only hours before.

Poor Brentford Surveys the Scene.

Judgment came in the early morning hours.

Harsher than expected.
Colder than predicted.
Twenty-four degrees.

Poor Brentford surveyed the scene.

“Your pound of cure was heroic,” he observed. “But was it enough?”

I looked out at the mountains and smiled. The trees, in all their green fullness, had been spared.

We began uncovering our plants.

One by one.

Here a bloom lifted.
There a stem held.
Elsewhere, leaves—cold, but alive.

We kept going.

More life.
More holding on.
More quiet insistence.

In the end, we lost only one.

And that one? To be honest, I had not been covered it very well at all.

I stood there a moment longer than necessary.

I had been prepared to blame the frost.

This time, I didn’t.

And I let that be enough.

To Mend or Not to Mend, that Is the Question | Poor Brentford Has His Notions

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“Some things serve us best by finishing well.”
— Poor Brentford Lee (b. 1947. Advisor on matters requiring both thread and judgment. Maintains that things well used are best released with gratitude.)

Poor thing. It was just hanging there in the closet.

My favorite purple linen shirt. It was freshly ironed, as it always is, because Gary cares and continues faithfully to press it into presentability even though we both know the collar has grown thin, the threads worn nearly bare, the fabric softened beyond persuasion by years of loyal service at the neckline.

It hangs. Right beside the better ones, right beside the best ones. It still looks handsome at a distance. The color holds its dignity. The linen remembers its authority.

But up close, the collar tells the truth.

There I stood, looking at it, wondering whether I might wear it out in public one more time.

“Dare I?”

I suspected not.

Still, the idea would not entirely leave me. Gary has shown more than once that he knows his way around a needle. I have seen evidence of his skill. A careful stitch here, a thoughtful repair there. Nothing dramatic. Simply competent and reliable.

I couldn’t help but wonder:

“Could Gary save my collar? Could he perform one more act of restoration that would allow me to parade around in public in my old faithful shirt?”

I stood there longer than any sensible person should reasonably devote to a worn piece of linen, quietly debating whether dignity required retirement or reinforcement.

And that was when Poor Brentford arrived.

He did not offer advice immediately. Poor Brentford rarely rushes. He prefers to ask me questions that seem innocent until I attempt to answer them.

“Are you quite certain,” he asked mildly, “that this is a path you wish to explore?”

I did not answer because I knew what direction he was about to take.

Poor Brentford’s memory is longer than I care to admit, even when it comes to fabric.

“Don’t you recall other occasions,” he continued, “when well-intended mending produced unintended outcomes?”

He did not need to specify.

I knew. But I chose to give him that blank stare that always works for me when I feign innocence.

“Remember your sister’s dress?”

Of course, I did. Judy needed something special for an important high school occasion. She had a lovely white dress–a hand-me-down from an older sister. Elegant, well made, perfectly respectable. But what teenage lady wants to wear a dress that has made its public debut already?

“Surely you remember the persuasive talk your resourceful mother gave her?”

“‘Judy,’ she whimpered with soft confidence, “I can transform that dress into something so stunning it will look brand new. A packet of Rit dye is all I need. Pink will be breathtaking on you.'”

Poor Brentford need not have refreshed my memory further. I remembered all.

My mother prepared the dye, immersed the dress, and waited the appointed time.

Judy and I walked out into the back yard with my mother as she hung the dress on the clothesline.

“Oh, Judy. It’s stunning!”

Judy looked, not terribly convinced, even less so when she walked around to inspect the back of the dress.

“Mama! Look! The back doesn’t match. It’s a much deeper pink.”

She was right. The front embraced a gentle pink, while the back pursued a darker vision of the same dream.

Judy was crying. I was laughing. And Poor Brentford? He had the nerve to offer encouragement.

“Listen here, girl. Two shades of pink simply mean twice the fashion. People admire originality.”

They did not. But Poor Brentford was not to be undone. To this day I can still hear him applauding my mother’s sincerity all the while admitting that a new dress was what the day—and Judy’s event—needed.

“Stop pining away over your purple shirt,” he ordered as I continued to stand and stare. “Sometimes, some things are best left alone. Have you forgotten Audrey’s sewing machine?”

How could I not remember. My sister had talked about it often.

As a newlywed, she was proud of her sewing skills but lacked the mechanical companion she believed her talents deserved. Rather than come right out and ask for a sewing machine, she mentioned casually that if she had one, she could mend his tattered garments while frugally extending their wearability.

Poor Brentford understood her plight and reminded her:

“A sewing machine is never an extravagance. It is an investment in continuity.”

And so it was. Repairs followed. Patches appeared. Shirts and trousers acquired energetic embellishments that coworkers described—not entirely unfairly—as reminiscent of a coat of many colors.

But the decisive test came when a funeral required that Audrey shorten Bobby’s dress pants. She took careful measurements and made her sewing machine sing. She was certain that she had completed the alteration with seamstress precision. When her husband tried on the trousers, one side was several inches shorter than the other.

Poor Brentford, never inclined toward alarm, regarded the matter calmly.

“Length,” he observed, “is sometimes a matter of perspective.”

Audrey made every effort to restore balance. She even added fabric at the bottom, but she could not hide the seam that was required to extend the length. Her husband never made it to the funeral, but he never forgot the trousers that he never wore.

By resurrecting these two historical family moments, I knew what Poor Brentford was doing. He was reminding me of the disappointment I would face if I insisted on saving what time had already altered.

“Well-intended mending,” he whispered gently, “does not always restore what we hope it will restore.”

We stood there together, looking at the collar Gary had pressed with such quiet care.

“Surely you’re not thinking that the collar could be reversed?”

It was as if he had read my mind.

“Don’t even go there,” he continued. “Allow the shirt to go down dignified.”

Poor Brentford has always understood something I am still learning. Mending is not always accomplished with needle and thread. The dress was altered beyond harmony. The trousers were improved beyond wearability. The collar had been laundered into truth, its edge now softened to the point of surrender.

“Some things serve us best by finishing well.”

Poor Brentford said nothing more. He did not need to. He has always known that mending takes many forms.

We mend by stitching.
We mend by adapting.
We mend by honoring.
We mend by remembering.

But, sometimes, we mend best by releasing.

Little by Little

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“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). French pioneer of the personal essay.

I tried to blame it on the boots.

I tried to blame it on the coat.

I tried to blame it on the sweater.

I tried to blame it on the scales.

I even tried to blame it on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But I knew deep down inside that on those occasions I made conscious choices to eat the rich foods that I served up for Gary and me, and sometimes for our guests. Turkey first, of course—sliced generously, then followed by ham, salty and sweet, and later a rack of lamb brought out because it felt like the season called for something a little special. Deep-dish pecan pie, glossy and heavy with syrup. Deep-dish apple pie, still warm, the kind that sinks slightly when the knife goes in. Golden fruitcake—dense, fragrant, unapologetic—cut thin and then, somehow, not so thin. Banana nut bread—the healthy version, of course—on the counter, always ready for just one more slice. Candy dishes everywhere, each one holding something different: chocolates, caramels, peppermints, specialty candies meant for guests but sampled daily. Taffy apple salad. Orange fluff salad. Cranberry sauce—homemade, of course—because it wouldn’t be the holidays without it. Gravy poured generously, more than once. Sourdough dinner rolls torn open while still warm, butter melting into the crumb. And wine—one bottle opened, then another, because it paired well, because it was already there, and because winter evenings stretch long. And it was good. All of it was good.

One or two overindulgences wouldn’t have been so bad. But what started with Thanksgiving rolled into Christmas, kept going through New Year’s, and here I am after a prolonged pig-out snow-in, blaming my weight on scales, sweaters, coats, and boots.

I know better. This is a repeat of last year and the year before, stretching back to the start of memory. All along my satiated journey, I knew what was happening. I sensed it in my body. I felt it in my clothes. I saw it in the mirror. Eventually, my day of reckoning came when I stepped on the scales, gasped, and sighed,

“Enough, Brent. Enough.”

I could veer off into a litany about all the reasons I overindulged. I have no doubt that you’ve heard them all already. Heard them all.

But I’ll plate up a few reasons anyway. Food is how we mark time. Holidays, snow days, long evenings, the stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year’s—meals become punctuation marks. We don’t just eat; we commemorate. One dinner leads to another, then another, until the season itself seems to demand a full plate.

Then there’s winter. The quiet. The staying in. Food keeps us company. It warms the house, fills the hours, shapes the day. A loaf on the counter, something sweet after supper, a little more than usual because there’s nowhere else to go and nothing much else to do.

None of this is shocking. None of this is new. But here’s the thing. Knowing why doesn’t change the outcome. It only explains how easily awareness can lag behind—until one morning, one glance, one number brings it all into focus.

I could dwell on all of that. But chances are you can already relate—whether in your own “appetite” life or in some other corner. You can relate to areas where you’ve lost an awareness—areas that need attention.  Maybe it’s your perennial garden beds overtaken by weeds. Maybe it’s your inbox overtaken by junk mail. Maybe it’s your personal and spiritual relationships overtaken by inattention. The list of “maybes” goes on and on.

But here’s the good news. We don’t need to rant and rave. We don’t need to blame our metaphorical sweaters, coats, and scales. And we don’t need to blame ourselves.

We only need to notice—and then course-correct.

Little by little.

A Banner Year, Gently Told

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As this year draws to a close, I want to thank you for visiting my blog 32,727 times.

That didn’t happen overnight. And it didn’t happen by accident.

This year, more people found their way here than ever before—slowly, steadily, and often by returning. Compared with last year, readership grew significantly, not because anything went viral, but because the writing kept meeting the right readers at the right moment.

Growth, the quiet way,

These pages have held many things:

● 18th-century satire and present-day kitchens.
● Scholarship and softness.
● Books, biscuits, dogs, devotion, memory, love.

Some posts traveled far. Others found only a handful of readers. But every one was written with care—and read with attention.

I don’t think of these as clicks.

I think of them as moments of shared presence in a distracted world.

You made this a banner year.

If you were one of the 32,725:

● thank you for reading,
● thank you for lingering,
● thank you for making this a place worth returning to.

Here’s to a year shaped by patience, curiosity, and generosity of spirit—and to whatever quiet magic comes next.

Wired with wonder,
Brent

An Open Letter to a Sudden Surge

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The MtnHouse
December 11, 2025

Dear Sudden Surge,

You took me by surprise again this morning. As always, when I awakened, I checked my Fitbit to see how my heart did overnight. Then I checked WordPress to see how my readers were doing.

And there you were. Another thousand views. A quiet jolt to the chart. Numbers climbing when I wasn’t looking.

You’ve been dancing higher and higher since October, when I passed 15,000 and figured I’d reached my high-water mark. I even wrote a piece of thanks back then, thinking I’d said all there was to say. But now here we are—December 11th—and this little corner of the internet has gathered 25,053 views.

I’ve done nothing different. I have no flashy headlines. I have no trending hashtags. I just keep following the same rhythm: writing essays born from memory in a home filled with love. I just keep foolin’ around with words and ideas.

So why now, after all these years?

That question hangs gently in the room with me. It’s not demanding an answer. It’s simply inviting a reflection. Maybe something shifted in the writing. Maybe it’s more expansive. Maybe it’s more lived-in. Maybe it’s a voice carrying a steadier warmth now. Maybe it’s grief that’s softened into grace. Maybe it’s love that arrived not with fanfare, but with a quiet hand stretched out in invitation. Maybe it’s all of those things. Maybe. And add to all those maybes one more. Maybe it’s readers sharing with readers.

Gary, of course, doesn’t ask to be written about. But his presence is here, between the lines, in the patience of a paragraph, the steadiness of tone, the way I’ve learned to let silence do some of the talking.

Ruby, on the other hand, insists on being written about, whether she’s nosing me away from my smartphone or curling up in solidarity as I revise for the twenty-fifth time. She is, as always, the keeper of the tempo, the mistress of the move.

So this isn’t an open letter to public stats. It’s a letter to something deeper. It’s a letter to what it means to keep writing when no one’s watching, and then to wake up and find that someone was.

My essays aren’t meant to dazzle. And I know: they don’t. They’re just small acts of holding up the light, one weekly reflection at a time. The fact that they’re being read, now more than ever, tells me something I didn’t expect: quiet honesty still finds its way.

Thank you, Sudden Surge, for reminding me that patience has its own reward, that consistency is a kind of faith, and that somewhere out there, readers are still pausing to linger with a slow essay from the mountain.

I don’t know what this upturn means, or where it leads. But I do know I’ll keep showing up with my smartphone in hand and love at my side.

Wired with wonder and gratitude,
Brent

The Shape of a Surge

Looking Back on the Outer Edge of Forever

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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

—Marcel Proust (1871–1922). from his The Captive (1923), the fifth volume of his seven-part masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. Proust’s exploration of memory and perception reshaped modern literature.

Somewhere I saw it. Everywhere, maybe. Nowhere? Wherever—it grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go.

It was the gripping question:

“What would you tell your 18-year-old self?”

It lingered—since forever. Or yesterday? Either way, one morning not long ago, I tried to get rid of it by tossing it out to others—as if the orphaned question might leave me alone once it found a new home.

The replies were as varied as I expected, and as humorous and matter-of-fact, too:

“Buy stock in Apple and Amazon.”

“Be good at life; cultivate a well-rounded lifestyle.”

“Be patient; trust in God.”

“Serve God better.”

“Stay young; don’t age.”

“Be friends with your mom. Spend more time with family. Don’t let important things slide.”

“Don’t worry about impressing anyone other than yourself.”

Almost always, their offerings included a request to hear what I would have told my 18-year-old self. As a result, the question dug itself more deeply into my being, as I stalled by answering:

“I’m still thinking.”

It was true. But I knew I had to answer the question, too, not for them, but for me.

Several possibilities surfaced.

The first was rather light-hearted:

“You don’t have to have it all figured out. Just stay curious, kind, and honest. Don’t waste your energy chasing approval. Learn to cook, listen more than you talk, and remember: dogs and good people can tell when your heart’s true. Oh, and wear sunscreen.”

I dissed it immediately (though it carried some truths). Then I came up with:

“Don’t rush. The world will still be there when you’re ready to meet it. Pay attention to seemingingly insignificant things. They’re where meaning hides. Keep your humor close and your integrity closer. Fall in love, but don’t lose yourself in the process. And when life hands you a fork in the road, check which one smells like supper.”

I didn’t like that any better, though it, too, spoke truth. I was certain I could nail it with a third attempt:

“You think you know who you are right now, but you’re only meeting the opening act. Be kind. Be curious. And don’t confuse noise for meaning. The world rewards loudness, but grace whispers. Listen to that whisper. It’s you, becoming.”

Then six words sauntered past, not so much tinged with regret as with remembrance. Six words. Six.

“Be a citizen of the world.”

Those words had crossed my path before. In fact, I remember exactly when—not the actual date but instead the general timeframe and the location.

It would have been in the early 1980s, when I was working at the Library of Congress. I was standing in the Main Reading Room of the Jefferson Building, as captivated by its grandeur as I had been when I first started working there in 1969.

Above me, light spilled through the dome like revelation. Gold, marble, and fresco conspired to make the air itself feel sacred, as if thought had taken on architecture. Beyond those arches, knowledge waited in silence, breathing through pages and time.

Even now, I can close my eyes and see it: the way the dome seemed to rise into forever—an invitation, a reminder—that the world was larger than any one life, and I was already standing in the heart of it.

As an editor of the National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints—the “bibliographic wonder of the world”—I knew every alcove, every corridor, every one of its 532 miles of bookshelves, holding more than 110 million items in nearly every language and format. I had walked those miles over and over again doing my editorial research. I had come to learn that knowledge knows no barrier. I had come to learn that it transcends time and place.

At the same time, I decided that I could transcend place, too. With my experience and credentials, I began to imagine working in the world’s great libraries—first the Library of Congress, then The British Library, then the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, then the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma.

I didn’t know where the journey would end, but it gave me a dream, a dream of being a citizen of the world of learning.

More than that, it was a dream untainted by pretense—never by the notion of being uppity. Instead, it was a simple dream. I figured that if I had made it from the coal camps of West Virginia to the hallowed halls of our nation’s library, I could pack up whatever it was that had brought me that far and go throughout the world, savoring knowledge and learning—and perhaps, over time, gaining a smidgen of wisdom.

But here’s the catch. If transcending geography is the measure of my dream’s fulfillment—the wanderlust, the scholar’s yearning for marble floors, old paper, and the hum of languages not my own—then, at first glance, I failed. I never made it to any of the world’s great libraries except the Library of Congress.

However, as I look back through my life-lens of 78 years come November 20, I realize that maybe I went beyond the geographic destinations that I set for myself.

I went from the mountains of West Virginia to the monuments of D.C., from there to the marshlands of South Carolina where I earned my Ph.D., from there back home to the monuments, and, from there, at last, to the Shenandoah Valley and college teaching that took me internationally via Zoom and tapped into Open Educational Resources that did away with the restrictive border of printed books.

In a sense, then, although I didn’t cross country borders, I crossed the borders of ideas, with my voice carrying me farther than my feet ever needed to.

I’ve managed to live generously, teach across generations, write with empathy, research with joy, garden with gratitude, cook with curiosity, and love with intentionality. In all of that, I have been that citizen of the world—not by passport stamps, but by curiosity. By compassion. By connection.

Maybe that’s the truth I’d offer my 18-year-old self:

“You don’t have to travel the world to belong to it.
You only have to live with your eyes open.”