Author: Vivian Bikulege

The world is new each morning – that is God’s gift, and a man should believe he is reborn each day. –  Israel Ben Eliezer  I stood on Fripp Island’s shoreline New Year’s Day to watch the sun rise. Against the backdrop of an incandescent horizon, small waves rolled across a stretch of beach colliding and tumbling, becoming one and then disappearing, leaving behind the sizzling sound water makes as it sifts and sinks in between granules of sand.

Hope has two lovely daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger that things are not what they ought to be, courage to make them what they might be. – St. Augustine During this season of peace and good will, I read a daily reflection that asked what outrages me. It took me by surprise.

Eating is something I take for granted. Not only do I open my refrigerator fully expecting the ready availability of sustenance, I have the benefit of “free” meals during business travel. However, dining on the road is not always exotic or pleasurable. Eating a gyro at a desk in my hotel room, anchored between my laptop and a 42-inch widescreen television, is not inviting and can have the overtones of comfortable solitary confinement. Frankly, business travel has kept me away from my weekly Weight Watchers meeting on Charles Street, and falling off of the WW wagon sets the stage for relapse into chocolate, butter, and cookies.

I do not want to create a voice for Cokie. She had her own. My mom’s Bichon Frise passed away in September, and I do not want to be cute or clever at the expense of my mother’s emotions, or the memory of our dear pet and friend. The idea for this essay came from a CD about memoir written and narrated by Natalie Goldberg. On a ride back to Beaufort from Jacksonville, FL, Ms. Goldberg asked me what it is to “have an old friend from faraway.”

  Will you laugh just like your mother Will you sigh like your old man Will some things skip a generation Like I’ve heard they often can Are you a poet or a dancer A devil or a clown

I grew up at Anita Stalter’s birthday parties. Like Abraham Lincoln, Anita was born on February 12. Every year, from 1965 until we graduated from the eighth grade in 1972, Anita’s mom Leona decorated their basement with paper cut-outs of Washington and Lincoln’s heads, red Valentine hearts glued to white doilies, and flying cupids armed with bow and arrows. Mrs. Stalter pulled together the best of February and tied it up in pink and white crepe paper, hanging it in twists and loops across the ceiling, and punctuating the annual event with candy dishes full of Brach’s conversation hearts that whispered “Be Mine” and “Hug Me.”

I treated water for a long time.  It was my career for over twenty-five years.  I began treating water in Savannah, Georgia working for Calgon Corporation.  Even though people confused Calgon with the Culligan Man or the woman in the bathtub, her hair pinned up in a chignon as she dripped bubbles and pleaded with Calgon to take her away from the exhaustion of her everyday life, neither was a true portrayal of what I did for a living.  I treated industrial and municipal water with chemicals, and not the kind you put in your water softener or bathtub.

  Car is parked, bags are packed, But what kind of heart doesn’t look back –  Sara Bareilles, Breathe Again One of the hardest things I did in the past month was to leave my dad’s ladder at the Franciscan Center.  Wobbly and wooden, the ladder was splattered with paint like a canvas in Jackson Pollock’s studio.  A broken, red metal hinge still held the creaking legs together in their V-shape.  I leaned the ladder up against the building and considered how many times my dad had climbed up and down and up and down his ladder. 

Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights. – Pauline R. Kezer   I had a pretty rough phone call the other day.  Actually, every work day has been a bit rocky.  This past January, the business unit I have worked in for the past two and a half years was acquired.  In other words, I was sold.  Fortunately, I still have a job and I can continue to work from my home office in the Lowcountry. All good.