Jessica Merritt is counting down the days until her husband returns home from his final days of service in the U.S. Navy. After more than 20 years in the military and nine deployments, Cory Merritt will return home to his family for good in about two weeks, and this time he’ll return to their new home in Western North Carolina. 

Canton native Eric Hill was 18 when he decided to join the military. It was a quick decision. He wanted to get married and needed a way to provide support. What sprang forth from that decision was more than he could have envisioned.

It was during the third sip of my second glass of wine that I decided to splurge. As a minimalist, in terms of materialistic things, I choose to spend my money on good food, drink and experiences. Thus, it was a time to celebrate, so why not purchase the $89 bottle of champagne, eh?

As the sun began its descent on Monday —  the eve of Election Day — I sat down to write this column and my thoughts turned to happiness and satisfaction.

I thought about being in a place, a state of mind, where one can look at one’s life, both into the past and into the future, and perhaps break into a small grin and say something like, “Somehow, surprisingly, I’ve managed to create a pretty good thing, a life and a family I never imagined for myself. I’m happy.” 

They say when a mom dies a family can fall apart. 

I’d heard this before, in movies and in real life, but I never thought it would be an issue for my family. We’ve always been so close. We always made it a priority to be together for holidays and other special occasions. But when a mother passes, the remaining souls realize it was often she who made all of this happen. 

Lately I’ve been feeling tightness in my chest, an inability to take a nice relaxing breath. When I told my boyfriend this, he asked if I felt OK otherwise. We live in a time where anything related to breathing is immediately connected to COVID-19. How I knew it wasn’t a virus is that when I went on a long run, my breathing got easier, not more labored. When I slowed down for a five-minute meditation, my breathing calmed.

Labor Day 2020. After finishing up my arts feature for this week’s newspaper, I jumped into the old Tacoma and headed for Lake Logan to swim and layout in the sunshine of a fading summer. Park down the gravel road and grab a seat on the dock. Pop open a cold beverage and hoist it high to those familiar and beloved faces surrounding you. 

Pulling onto Lake Street last Saturday afternoon, an odd sense of self flowed through my veins while cruising through Rouses Point, New York. My hometown until I left for college, the tiny Canadian Border community had seen better days. And yet, Saturday was another happy occasion for my family, who has lived in that town for generations. 

When I became a mom at age 29, I did all the things I was supposed to do, all the things society correlated with being a “good mother.”

On Aug. 11, my late grandfather, Frank Kavanaugh, would have turned 100 years old. But, alas, it’s been some 13 years since Fred left this world (June 9, 2007). I tend to think of him quite often, especially as I’ve gotten older and continued to wander the backroads and highways of the rollicking, undulating landscape that is the United States.