Memorial Day, 1995

Twenty-five years ago, Memorial Day, 1995, Barry and I moved away from our dream home in Albany, Georgia and settled into the house where I live today in Clay County NC. It was to be a temporary home until we sold our house on the farm where I had grown up. 

What a day it was for me. My emotions were in turmoil. Leaving the only home we had ever had together and moving hundreds of miles from family, had me feeling as though I were being ripped apart.

We had always thought we wanted to live in the mountains near a lake. We found the perfect place.  We could see Lake Chatuge from our upstairs deck. We could sit at our dining table and see Brasstown Bald, the highest point in Georgia on the far side of the lake.

The only problem was the living area of the mountain house was 1/3 of the space in our Georgia home that we both loved so much. The living/dining area was not as big as the main living area where we had held parties and family gatherings for two decades enjoying the house we had saved for and dreamed about. Barry had lived in California and was set on having a redwood house with a modern design. That was fine with me. Our friend, a young architect, hungry to do something creative, agreed to design the house at a price we could afford. 

He was happy with the house and said the only problem was the location. He would like to have had it in a ritzy neighborhood in the city. We loved the location in the woods on the back side of the farm my father bought in 1942. 

Windows surrounded the downstairs so we felt like we were a part of the forest. From inside I saw many wonders of nature like a rabbit-mating-dance from my kitchen window. Birds went about their daily lives unaware that I was just feet away watching them. Squirrels played and large turtles passed through our yard.

Oscar P. Opossum visited our patio every night. Barry named him, and we loved watching him eat the large insects that were drawn to our porch lights.

We had a stable and two horses we often rode in the woods and on the trails around the farm. We loved country living and all the freedom and privacy it provided. 

So, it was natural that we wanted something similar when we moved to the mountains. Our little house is surrounded with woods, wildlife and still only five miles from emergency care if needed. We did not want to be living high on a mountain where snow in winter would prevent an ambulance reaching us should we call. Barry had recovered from open heart surgery while we lived on the farm, and his health was uppermost in my mind when we chose a place to live in the Appalachians. 

The house was fine, but it was the view that sealed the deal. Little did we know that this house would become home for the rest of our years together. Barry was never happier than sitting on the deck in the quiet of the evening listening to the sounds of the woods as the sun set over the lake. 

First Christmas, 1995, at our mountain house

I was asked, after he died, was I going to sell my house. Isn't it hard to live with all those memories there? No, it is wonderful to live with all the memories of our lives together in this house. His pictures are prominent in my living room. His cowboy hats have their own special place in the hallway. His first guitar rests on a stand where I see it every day. When I have guests we often talk about Barry and how we loved him and still miss him. But no one cries. We laugh at his great sense of humor, at the things he did and said. We remember him with joy.

Twenty-five years ago I had no idea what this house would hold for me, for us. We lost two beloved dogs here, Kodi and Rocky, and we lost our sweet south Georgia cat, Tiger who brought in live rabbits and chipmunks, turned them loose and watched me scramble to get them back outside. 

Tiger, our south Georgia bob-tailed cat

We turned a two bedroom, two bath little house into a three bedroom, three bath home with my writing studio in the finished daylight basement. For ten years I taught and invited writers to teach there. That was what helped me get through those early years of mourning. Now I spend most of my time upstairs but plan to use the studio space for something I will enjoy. Maybe I will paint again or take up sewing. Who knows what will grab me in the coming years.  

I hope to stay in this house for the rest of my days. I continue to like the privacy, the beauty of my little acre, and this very peaceful neighborhood. I love my nearest neighbors who are like family to me. My best friends are in this area, my writing community is here and, even though I differ from most of the natives in my psychological values and perspectives, the people are good folk and I appreciate them. When I want to get away, I just head down to Roswell Georgia where my sister lives, and we have some family time. 

Gay C. Moring

Summer's Beauty in the Mountains

Summer is filled with beauty in nature. Trees surround my house and line the roads as I travel here in the mountains of western North Carolina. Wild flowers abound on the sides of highways or trails. But I lose my mind when I go to any place with flowering plants in pots. Just yesterday I stopped in at Lowe’s and came home with several colors of flowers. I can’t get out in the yard and dig in the dirt anymore, but I make a beautiful garden of color on my upstairs deck. 

                      I’ll share some of the color in my life today.

I'll pot these tomorrow or one day soon

Some people dig up and throw away the daylilies that grow so easily beside the roads, but I think they are very pretty. 

Roadside daylilies

Wild ferns grow all around the edges of my yard.

The Canadian Geese are a nuisance to some, but I love to watch them. They hang out mostly near the lake - like on the golf course - and they leave a mess behind.

I am so blessed to live near this lake surrounded by mountains. I sit and drink in the awe of it all.

Just a walk around my house or a short drive in my car brings sights and sounds of nature, beauty that I never take for granted.                 Another thing to list in my gratitude journal. 

Seagulls on a Mountain Lake in February

On a dreary gray day, I took Rocky to the lake for a walk. We were quite alone there except for the lovely gulls flashing white above the icy water. Although I saw my first seagull on Lake Chatuge in 1995, I'm still amazed to find these birds so far from the coast.
I closed my eyes and for a moment I stood on the beach in Panama City, Florida. The sounds of the birds as they flitted and dived, soared and sang their piercing notes, took me back to 1965. I smelled the coconut tanning lotion, the slightly fishy odor on the wind.
Lapping waves broke the mountain silence, sweeping sand into the sea.


Mountain Seagull

Mountains stretch like layers,
Payne's Grey parchment,
growing fainter
as they reach toward
pale cerulean sky.

The Bald pokes its head
up through a cottony mist.
Lake Chatuge wraps the mountains,
lapping love, cool in coves
tucked tightly between peaks.

Sailboats, triangles, red and yellow
wrapping paper, swiftly blow
before the wind that rustles
maples, locust trees
where songbirds rest.

My spirit soars above the scene
a seagull far from home,
yearning to embrace
and build a nest.


from Now Might As Well Be Then, poems by Glenda Council Beall

Vacation

"A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking."

I like this quote I found in a magazine because it is so, so true. I took a vacation yesterday. I didn't leave town or even our county, the smallest one in North Carolina.
A vacation doesn't have to mean driving hundreds of miles to the beach or flying to Europe to see buildings thousands of years old. A vacation can be just in your mind. Watching the Travel Channel on TV is a way my husband vacations at this time. He enjoys the beach resorts in locales too expensive for us to ever visit. In his mind he takes a vacation because he can no longer take what he's been taking -- the dark days of winter, the rain and cold, and his enforced immobility because of his health. His mood gets dark like the clouds that blew up yesterday and gave us a five minute blizzard.


I also took a vacation yesterday. I could no longer take what I'd been taking, so I drove my little red hybrid around town to the post office, the drug store, the grocery store, the bank and when I had no place else to go, I drove to the lake and parked facing the water.

The wind over the lake created white caps. The bare bushes and grasses on the bank tossed and leaned away from the water. In the distance forested islands blurred gray with the low clouds, and the mountains became hovering ghosts over the water. I opened my car windows and let the rain blow in clean and fresh and cold. Soon snow flakes and hard icy raindrops peppered my windshield. For just a few moments, the dark sky looked like night had set it, but as quick as it came, it was gone. To the west rays of sunshine streaked down from behind a small cloud over the lake like the pictures in the Bible we had at when I was a child. The pictures of Jesus kneeling and looking to Heaven.

My little vacation was short, but I drove home singing, my shoulders relaxed and a smile on my face.

This was a vacation I needed just as many caregivers need to take a moment for themselves. As women we often forget to take care of ourselves. To find quiet time, solitude, where we can think and focus.

As writers we need quiet time. Though difficult with the myriad of things we do, we must make it a priority. Schedule our writing time into our day.

If I could, I'd have a writing schedule like author Sharyn McCrumb. She writes all night and sleeps during the day when her husband and children are gone. I am a night owl. It is two o'clock in the morning right now.

Take a mini-vacation if you need to find quiet and alone time away from family, telephone and TV. I will go back to view the lake another day when I need a vacation. And I don't have to explain or apologize for going there, because when I return I'm a brighter and happier person..