Sabbatical

It has been a week since my last post and much has happened in our lives since then.  We learned earlier this month that Martha's Mom found a lump in her breast, and a biopsy confirmed that it was cancer.  We met with her oncologist on Tuesday of this week, and he said that it was Stage I breast cancer, which could be treated by performing a lumpectomy, the least invasive of surgeries.  Her oncologist - she was cheered to learn that he was a Presbyterian, the son of a Presbyterian Pastor, and a member of her sister's church in Asheville - said that he expected the surgery to go well.  It has been scheduled for January 23, and at that time he will determine if follow-up chemotherapy or radiation will be required.

So after having been in limbo for several weeks, our planned Sabbatical to Atlantic Beach, the third year in a row, was again a possibility.  We decided to leave on Wednesday morning, and to return for the surgery the week after next.  Martha's brother Bill will also be having surgery to remove a kidney stone that same week; we have good expectations that both surgeries will go well, and so we began organizing for this very welcome escape from the single-digit temperatures of Highlands to this place we have come to love so much in Atlantic Beach, which I have written about for the past two years in this blog.  It is a time to get away, to gain some perspective, to think about what we intend to achieve in the coming year.  I wrote the word on our blackboard in the kitchen:  Sabbatical, a time of rest and reflection and renewal.

I drove up to Town Tuesday night to pick up Asia House take-out the night before our departure, and the sky was alive with streaks of auspicious brilliant sunset hues, gleaming in the trees along the road and on the horizon.  I stopped at the overlook on the Walhalla Road and took a photo which did not do it justice.

Wednesday morning we were on the road early, struggling through thick fog and drizzle all the way to Asheville, and then traffic delays all along the way.  As we approached Raleigh, the traffic was bumper-to-bumper, and we did not arrive at Lizette's condo until nearly 5:00 p.m.  It is because of the gracious generosity of Martha's aunt Lizette that we can stay here in an oceanfront building that is mostly unoccupied during the winter.

We had a nice visit with Lizette.  She is a remarkable woman, her photo in a beautiful floor-length wedding gown on the wall of her living room, a winning photograph among 2000 in a competition at the time, and one can still see that beauty in the lines of her face.  But by the time we were on the road again, it was later than we had anticipated and it had become dark, the drive from Raleigh to Williamston a difficult one; cars rocketed past us at 80 miles an hour, and we thought we would never arrive.  But at last we reached the exit in Williamston where we have stayed many times on our way to the Outer Banks.  There in the darkness, like a ship in the night, was the Hampton Inn where we stayed for many years.  But just down the road was the Big Mill Bed & Breakfast, which Martha had discovered three or four years ago, an absolutely wonderful little place, a quirky and comforting sanctuary after the long drive. 

"Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm
Come in, she said I'll give ya shelter from the storm." - Bob Dylan

The B & B is operated by Chloe, who has taken a farm which has been in her family since 1922 and turned it into a very special place, filled with Mexican tiles and Georgia O'Keefe paintings from her travels in the Southwest, and recently featured in Our State magazine.

This was our third visit to Big Mill,and Martha had found a room in the Packhouse Suite, a place where tobacco had been dried and sorted in the past; we did not know exactly where it was.  We pulled into the driveway, exhausted and dazed from the long drive, looking for our little sanctuary.  In the past, we have stayed in the "Corn Crib" in the big white barn, but this was a new berth for us.  At last we found the entrance, around the far side of the barn, where much to our surprise there was two inches of snow remaining on the ground from the coastal storm that had struck the East Coast the previous week.

Our friends Skip and MaryAnn had been in New Bern the previous week and left a day early because of this coastal storm, from which Highlands was ironically spared.  We entered the little arched doorway and found a warm sanctuary within that was welcome after so many hours on the road!

On the kitchen table thoughtful Chloe had left a note.  And then, an hour later, she called on Martha's cell phone to confirm that we had arrived.  I do not think the desk clerk at the Hampton Inn down the road would have done that!  Breakfast had been prepared for the following morning, and there was fresh-ground coffee ready in the pantry:

We slept as soundly as we have for many days.  And the Breakfast Bake was delicious!  I wandered around the property this morning taking photos.

A women was packing up her car behind the barn.  "Where are you from?"  I asked.  "Virginia Beach.  I'm going to check on my house.  We had 10 inches of snow!"  I told her where we were from.  'We love this place," I said.  "Yes," she said.  "I'm a frequent flyer."

The road to New Bern passed through that poor flat country we know so well in this part of the state, with the most amazing little houses and farms along the way, tractors and old cars parked under the cover of falling-down sheds, family cemeteries in the front yard, farm machinery parked patiently alongside big barns ready for Spring.  It was so strange to see ice frozen in the swamp along the way.

 

It was lunchtime when we arrived in New Bern and one of our favorite places, Morgan's Tavern, a big restaurant finding a new home in a building constructed in 1911 that was known as the "New Bern Garage Company,."  Shrimp tacos and lobster bisque - a taste of the ocean just an hour away.

After lunch I wandered through the famous Mitchell's Hardware store.  You can find anything in Mitchell's, from 10-penny nails to electrical tape to traps for kitchen sinks.

 

And then, at the end of the day, we arrived at this place on the Atlantic Ocean.  The familiar walkway down to the beach: 

We watched a gorgeous sunset partially obscured by clouds, our first of many that we hope to witness during our stay here, our Sabbatical.  A time for reading, and writing, and watching the sea and sky.

And now I sit at the kitchen table, listening to the rhythmic crash of the surf, writing this post in a blog that few will read, grateful for simply being here and breathing the salt air.