Author: Vivian Bikulege

I hate to admit it, but I am learning from my husband.  Mac has been teaching me for a very long time, subliminally, sometimes in matters of fact, and lately in ways that are completely by his example.  This should not come as any surprise to me.  Mac is a clinical therapist.  He reads incessantly.  He has studied theories of human behavior and teaches people methods to identify flaws or character defects, gently prompts them to consider the benefits of changing, and provides a variety of tools to enable a person to begin and then sustain a better manner of living.

When I left New York to return home from my last business trip in 2010, snow began to fall.  It was not a winter storm like so many of the weather systems that have pummeled the Midwest and shaken the South to its core with bitter cold temperatures.  It was soft and quiet.  Big, fluffy flakes drifted down to Earth, lit up by the headlights of the small Delta Embraer aircraft destined for Savannah.  I will be in Detroit over the holidays, and chances are good that I will see snow.  But it is always the magic of the first snowflakes of the season that reawakens my sense of wonder for the white water crystals, knowing that no two are exactly alike.

  On October 22, Alex Anderson Jr. died.  He was the creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle, cartoon characters from the 1960’s.  I first read about Mr. Anderson’s passing in USA Today while having breakfast at a Hampton Inn in New Jersey, and it cast a bit of a sad shadow on my bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and me.  I grew up with the flying squirrel and Canadian moose, their buddies, and the villains who tried to bring them down. I love cartoons and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends was not like the Warner Bros.

By now, most of us are in the thick of it.  Christmas parties, Jingle Bells, cookie cutouts, the Nutcracker, twinkling lights, deadline shopping and wrapping paper.  Hanukkah is almost over, Kwanzaa is eight candle lights somewhere into the future, and we are entrenched in this millennium’s second decade. For me, December will be a blitzkrieg of finalizing projects at work, distributor meetings to review 2010 sales, price negotiations, and goal setting for 2011.  Days in December will fly by faster than a gull catching a winter breeze over the Woods bridge, and before you know it, Walgreen’s will have heart-shaped boxes lining the shelves in their seasonal aisle.

I spent Labor Day weekend healing – physically, spiritually and emotionally. For the last twenty-four years, the holiday weekend has been cause for a vacation for my husband and me to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  Although we have ventured all over this country and British Columbia to celebrate each other, our last two September adventures have been to cabins in the Georgia mountains.  This destination makes it easier to drop my mom off at my brother’s and pick her up on our way back home to Beaufort.  Another plus is that the log cabins are pet-friendly, so Toby the Beagle gets to be a part of our rendezvous.

I have been uprooted and relocated many times in my fifty-two years, maybe not as often as some of our military families or the retired executives who have made Beaufort County their home, but I have moved to and from enough places for one lifetime.  Even as I write this column, I am on the move.  I started this column in Philadelphia, having departed Providence earlier in the day, was rerouted through Baltimore for fuel, all on my way to settle in for one night in Newark before returning home.  Although my heart lives on Lady’s Island, my feet keep landing in different cities and various states, mostly for the purpose of making a living.

I am in the habit of picking up dead animals from the road, and moving them to what I believe to be more suitable locations – under a shrub, into the tall grass – a place less susceptible to traffic, a kind of informal wake.  Cats. Dogs.  Once, I hoisted a deer to the sidewalk; always wondering why I have this compulsion to relocate the deceased.

Water What is the vitality and necessity of clean water? Ask the man who is ill, who is lifting his lips to the cup. Ask the forest. – Mary Oliver

On Thursday, April 15, I was working the last day of a three-day global exposition called “In-Cosmetics” in Paris, France.  The day before, a volcano had erupted in Iceland.  Someone, a colleague or show attendee, casually mentioned that the Charles de Gaulle airport had shut down because of the volcano.  Although this seemed odd, (a distant volcano impacting the French airport?), and because I was scheduled to fly out on Sunday, I had little concern about the situation, and went about pursuing my intent on concluding business for a few days of sightseeing.

Lately, I am plagued by ghosts.  Not the white-sheeted type like Casper the Friendly Ghost, or...