Mom kept a canvas bag in the bottom of her closet. It was stuffed with fragments of fabric. The pieces were left-over remnants of gingham, corduroy, and flannel, with occasional slices of satin, that she’d sewn into garments, her Singer machine a productive hum of handiwork in our household. Denim, khaki, and wool that we outgrew and was deemed unsuitable for a hand me down also got deposited into the savings sack. In wintertime, when bags bulged, she and Granny combined their respective pieces to patch together quilts. Patterns were designed, a backing was framed with tobacco sticks, and they took to their corners in Granny’s living room, needled, thimbled, and threaded for bear. Some of my aunts, great aunts, and older cousins came at times, creating a quilting commune. None of the women on Mama’s side were big talkers. A fire burned in the fireplace while Mahalia Jackson and Elvis kept us company through the AM gospel station. Precious Lord Take My Hand and Peace in the Valley can flat out fill up a room. I played underneath the wooden frame, a canopy oasis hideaway for my Matchbox cars and story books.

It’s windy as we cross the bridges toward Morehead City. The rowdy waves white cap along Gallant’s Channel and down Newport River. There’s a sparkle on the surface. I’m told this glint of light on clear water is why we strut the title Crystal Coast.

“We should move here,” says Smokin Hot Love Biscuit from the driver seat. If riding around mid-day in a state of relaxed happiness when we used to be working makes us retro, then that worn, well-heeled shoe fits and we are styling.

2024 is a leap year. I always wondered how the February 28th and March 1st feel about their part-time, next-of-kin sibling who shows up every four years and gets a special name, changing up the mix, knocking months two and three akimbo from their same day synchronization. I imagine suspicious side eyes and snide remarks in calendar world. I suspect that Leap Day is used to this treatment, embracing that haters gonna hate and understanding that the role of being different and special isn’t without cost.

Warm fronts have summonsed fogs to the saltwater creek near our house this week, shrouding water and landscape with a layer of misty fabric. It reminds me of the all-cotton dishtowels Mom used to drape over Sunday lunch. Soft to the touch, they lounged on Pyrex dishes, loose and lazy in their coverage.  

In concert with this fog, the tide has been rolling in slow motion, making reflections sit still, pond-like. I like this respite from the January cold. The warm moisture creates boings of curls around my head and inserts a bounce in my step.

Winter fogs are real stunners, not in the normal sunny “everything is perfect” way, but in the irregular, uncommon beauty of that which alters the ordinary. The fogs of late are smoky and sexy and I’m crushing on them.

These aren’t the first fogs I’ve taken as lovers; I’ve always had a bend toward this type of weather. As a youngster, when my comprehension was tunneled and singular, directed at that which was visual, I found fog delightful. From the window of our little farmhouse on the hill, I thought that the pastures had vanished in vapor, as if a magician had performed a disappearing act, only to be returned with sunlight. On some levels, this sounds concerning, but it was my first real encounter with mystical.

On the 23rd of December 1953, my parents married in the parsonage of Bethlehem Baptist, Mom’s home church. Aunt Margie and Uncle Max served as witnesses, signing their license, certifying them in holy matrimony.

Family legend has it that Daddy borrowed a pick-up, and they spent their wedding night at an Asheboro Motel. In his youthful exuberance to check in and escort his brand-new bride into the room, he neglected to turn off the headlights. The next morning, Christmas Eve, brought a dead battery requiring a stranger’s jumper cables. Mom was twenty-one; Daddy, twenty-five.

They made their way back to Carthage and started their life together in a small wooden house on Grandaddy Barber’s land. With a scrawny cedar tree, one that they chopped down in the woods, they celebrated their first Christmas. I’m not sure how many ornaments it had, probably not many and certainly no lights as electricity cost dinero. Personally, I only knew the red glass lantern and the little blue bird that were said to have been with us from the beginning, but fourteen years and four children preceded me.

The wooden trough lived in the bottom kitchen cabinet, the one to the left of the sink that stuck sometimes, requiring a hip check. Stocked with a heavy blanket of flour, the trough served as the base of all things biscuit. Mom retrieved it from its shelf, bumped the door closed, and began the process with a clump of lard and a pond of buttermilk. She used her hand to swirl the ingredients until they coagulated into dough. I stood beside her on a metal step stool holding my faithful stuffed companion, Winnie the Pooh.

My family has big hands – short digits, broad knuckles. They are the hands of working people, cow milkers and row hoers. I watched Mom’s strong-boned, olive toned hands work magic in flower beds and French braids, but they seemed most at home in flour. A small square diamond and thin gold wedding band adorned her unpolished nails, buffed, and filed into crescent moons.