Vacation, all I ever needed ...

What’s a little vacation?

It’s going to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and hearing someone say it’s hot. And you gasp and say, “Bo, this ain’t hot. Where I come from they’ve had to put up new signs that say ‘Bridges May Melt Before Roads.’ ”

It’s hearing a cousin use a line learned from your grandmother, who was raised in these hills. If someone suggested a chore Granny should do, she might reply: “I don’t see a fat lady sitting in your lap.”

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It’s trembling gratitude from people from up there for our plates full of fresh, sliced tomatoes from Dempsey Farms on St. Helena Island. It’s red tomato juice running through Duke’s mayonnaise, soaking white bread, staining summer shirts and bringing big smiles.

It’s Lowcountry shrimp in a pan of red rice, where the Tabasco and bacon fight to be the flavor king.

It’s escaping the rat race only to sit in traffic in Charlotte.

It’s reading a headline from back home about Mount Pleasant considering the dreaded “M-word”: a moratorium on housing construction. And it’s wondering why they don’t do that all over. Leaving home helps you see that it’s getting awfully crowded out there.

It’s watching little cousins, several times removed, catching fireflies in the cool of the evening.

It’s a family reunion lunch with fried chicken, barbecue and hash, deviled eggs, red potatoes in string beans, macaroni and cheese, creamed corn, butter beans, warm buttermilk pie, pound cake and banana pudding.

It’s sharing recipes, like Nathalie Dupree’s two-ingredient biscuits: White Lily self-rising flour and heavy cream.

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It’s cousins playing guitar and mandolin on a log cabin porch so far into the night that even “Folsom Prison Blues” sounds joyful.

It’s a cousin wearing a black kilt to church and someone suggesting we take up a collection to buy him a longer one.

It’s leaning over the kitchen sink to eat a peach like an apple.

It’s beach music.

It’s finding special things, like a metal building shaped like a coffee pot, lemons placed on the grave of Stonewall Jackson or handmade apple butter at a farmers market.

It’s an impromptu run for fresh donuts.

It’s picking up a $2.99 kite to fly on the beach.

It’s playing golf in a sauna, or so it seemed.

It’s sitting on the porch and feeling the temperature plunge as a dark afternoon storm comes breezing across the water toward you .

It’s walking into a coffee shop 500 miles from home and seeing a Salty Dog T-shirt.

It’s visiting a family cemetery.

It’s getting a lump in your throat during the long goodbyes, when the cousins always sing “to the hills” of Psalm 121.