One December, a few weeks before Christmas, I went down to the square of my hometown to pass out flyers for a Christmas event at my church. I grew up several miles outside of town, so I didn’t frequent the block very often, except for the parade on Memorial Day every year. All the shops … Continue reading O Little Town
Sometimes, usually when I’m in the kitchen, I find myself thinking about my great-grandma Minerva, Papa Jay’s mom, who had a tight, little face, wore her black hair in a bun, and made him biscuits and gravy from scratch every morning. Papa is getting to an age when he can’t remember things well or often, … Continue reading A Long Line of Quiet Women
I used to go to church with a lady who got teary-eyed on September 11th, remembering how her husband could have easily flown as a pilot for United that day in 2001. As the Lord would have it, her husband wasn't working that morning, but Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania was a plane … Continue reading Where Were You?
On the Vocation of Nursing Jared and I spent one long week in the hospital back in February, watching his grandpa struggle to live. We stood at his bed rails all hours of the day, watching the nurses come, check, chart, rearrange IVs, then pass the clipboard of notes to the next nurse, then the … Continue reading Take Care
I called Mom from the kitchen the other morning while doing four things concurrently—telling her about the weekend, emptying the sink of dishes, washing towels and bedsheets, and making a grocery list. I was also thinking about how I needed to water the garden, make the bed, and take out the compost bucket. Mom herself … Continue reading Wife & Mother
In the home where Jared and I are going to live after we’re married, there is a step ladder in the middle of the living room. There’s a thick layer of dust on the floors, tools on the kitchen counters, missing toilet seats, and old bedsheets in the bathtub because that seemed like the cleanest … Continue reading What Will Be
Not many people know about Mill Creek Mountain (at least, we didn't think they did, but I’ll get to that). I wouldn’t know it myself were it not for Don and Bo Sosebee, for Vesta Baptist Church in the valley below it, and for Jared, who took me there. Jared and I took a drive … Continue reading On Behalf of Mill Creek Mountain
A few days ago, I dug my sourdough starter out from the back of the basement fridge, lifted off the tea towel, and found it was black and hard as stone. I said, Of course. This would be the year my starter died. My biologist friend had told me just last week that it’s quite … Continue reading The Year My Sourdough Starter (Nearly) Died
They showed a map on TV the other night that over her lifetime, U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky has nearly swum the circumference of the earth. She may as well have swum to Paris for the Olympics, I thought. But I wondered if all her training had felt that way---if, with each stroke, she felt herself … Continue reading Two Good Legs
For Joel & NatalieA Blessing for Their House May you live like you’re young in this house that’s older than you,old as the trees,old like the bell steeple on Main Street,and the railroad that runs with the river west to the town where Dad was born. May you not erase the aging lines of this place, which … Continue reading Remember
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