These days. It’s raining in North Carolina. A November kind of rain where the temps drop ‘bout 30 degrees overnight. Where the sky stays locked in with the gray of the overcast. And after 3 days the sun seems more like a memory of a thing. By 4 evening has begun to fall. And there’s a special kind of peace I associate with this wet, chilled air. The sound of the splash of tires through puddles as cars pass by the house. It’s all because of the holy of holy places in my home growing up - The Den. I grew up in a little 3 bed 1 bath house in old St. Andrews. The houses were all pretty much cookie cutter in the neighborhood but our house had an addition built before our arrival. A large room on the back of the house with a high ceiling and a huge brick fireplace on one wall and the official back door. Basically, me and sister grew up in this room. I could write an entire book of essays about nothing but this room and the unfolding seasons of life that transpired there. Needless to say, it was beloved this place we affectionately called The Cave. And these days when it rains in November, when the sun is a memory, I think of napping on a Sunday in that den. Of a fire having burnt down to a small warmth, the logs shifting and breathing out, the rain falling on the flat roof, wind blowing pine needless across its surface with a sweeping sound. The bare limbs of the big old Pecan tree waving in the chilly wind. Sometimes the low background sound of a football game playing on tv. And it was the safest of cocoons. And there was this wonderful, slowing sense of things, a lull of peace.