It was watching my father putt on Hole #14 at the Maggie Valley Country Club last Monday afternoon when a vivid thought appeared across my field of vision — don’t forget this moment of spending quality time with the old man. 

A few feet from my 84-year-old father was my mother, age 77, and also one of my best friends, age 66.

Hello from Room 8 at the Atlantis Inn, located in downtown Tybee Island, Georgia. It’s Monday morning and I’m currently sitting on the small balcony attached to the room. Sunshine overhead, the ocean just a block away. 

This is the final day of an extended road trip down to Saint Augustine, Florida, and back to my humble abode in Waynesville. I’ve been gone for the better part of the last three weeks, albeit working remotely and unrelentingly, as per usual.

It’s a crazy world out there, folks. And yet, it’s always been kind of nuts, just more so under the current circumstances. But, I remain optimistic. Shit, what’s the alternative? Freak out and bail on the universe? Nah, not my cup o’tea. 

As an older millennial, this is another bump in the road of life. All the wars, economic recessions, political chaos, cultural shifts and social unrest (and also the pandemic), with most of it since I entered the workforce 19 years ago.

Hello from St. Augustine, Florida. Specifically, a small bungalow a few blocks from the Spanish ruins and the heart of the city. This place has been rented by my folks for the month of March for the last 13 years, these two snowbirds fleeing the frozen North Country that is our native Upstate New York. 

Hello from the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. It’s Monday evening and I’m currently sitting at a TGI Fridays in the B-Terminal wing. The Miller Lite draft is both overpriced and oversized. “Welcome to Texas,” the server (named Lolo) says to me when I admire the size of the large glass and hearty pour. 

Hello from Room 216 at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites on the southern edge of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It’s 9:30 a.m. Gazing out the window of the hotel, I can see the ancient ridges of the snowy Park Range Mountains surrounding the community in this high desert corner of the West. 

Hello from “The Ice Chalet,” a hockey rink just west of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, along Kingston Pike. It’s Thursday evening and I find myself one of only three spectators in the bleachers watching some of the finest amateur skaters in this city go at it mere hours after clocking out of their day job. 

At 9 a.m. Wednesday, the alarm went off from the smart phone on my nightstand. Reaching for the contraption and reading the morning text messages, it appeared our weekly editorial meeting set for 10 a.m. would shift to Friday. And yet, before I could roll back over to sleep a little more, another message pinged on the phone. 

I had just finished a 3.3-mile jog along the backroads of Clinton County. The afternoon sun was quickly falling behind the snowy peaks of the Adirondack Mountains in the distance. The slow shadow of winter night soon enveloping the Champlain Valley, my parents’ Upstate New York farmhouse smack dab in the middle of it. And it was at this moment my mother asked me a question. 

Hello from my folks’ farmhouse out in the countryside of Upstate New York. It’s been mighty frigid here in my native North Country since I arrived home last week. At one point, ‘round midnight on a recent evening, the temperature dropped to around -22 degrees. Daytime temps hovered at zero for several days, with wind chills from the Canadian Arctic making critters outside hide and remain silent and those inside huddled near the fireplace, waiting out the cold.