Last Thursday driving east to where home used to be, my mind swelled with stories. It always does, but they used to be about me. This time in the eight hours from Pickens, SC to Hampton, VA, I was bursting with ideas from three interviews in the days prior. Evan, Sue, Chris. When I visit, I’ve got so many friends and family to see that I couch surf from home to home, no desk in sight. Those had been vacations. Now, I’m a writer. Where would these people’s stories come to life?
Family
Not a Typical Tuesday
Today's not a typical Tuesday nor Teacher's Day. I'm having the third of four hand surgeries in fifteen months. Typing and crocheting likely got me here, and I hope I'm able to get back to both quickly. Last year, it was bilateral carpal tunnel. This month, it's bilateral trigger thumb. My doctor will fix the … Continue reading Not a Typical Tuesday
My Dreams are Chasing Puerto Rico
I keep waking up in Pickens, South Carolina, but my dreams are still in this tropical town on Puerto Rico’s west coast. It’s such a hidden gem that I won’t give up the name so quickly, but I’ll take you there in stories and photos; it’s like stepping into my desktop background, all sandy surf … Continue reading My Dreams are Chasing Puerto Rico
Pursuits, People, and Poetry
Spring break screams three things to me: find a beach, declutter, and grow something. Tomorrow, I fly to Puerto Rico with my brother. Tonight, I write to declutter and grow on my back patio in South Carolina. Forty and single. Restless and… ready?
Death on St. Patrick’s Day
St. Patrick is said to have died March 17th over 1500 years ago. Was it expected? It wasn’t when my mother’s mother died on the same date fifty-one years ago. It wasn’t when my friend died on St. Patrick’s Day just past. I’ve never believed in luck, but for me, it’s a day that marks loss instead...
Grandpa’s Garden
These glossy, green globes are a sign of growth, an assurance of a future harvest promised by nature in my little garden bed. Absent the mature red hue, would you even know they were tomatoes? I plant them now like Grandpa Joseph did decades ago and Great-Grandpa Angelo nearly a century before that.
The Juxtaposition of Life and Death
Another of winter’s intermittent episodes forced me to bundle up and brace for the cold as I set up on the front porch for a much-needed writing indulgence. White puffs of breath remind me I’m alive. The patio heater my parents gave me, Charming’s pilfered grad school hoodie, and Gram’s blanket can’t seem to warm … Continue reading The Juxtaposition of Life and Death
If Grammy’s Not in the Garden…
Indian style on my white wicker love seat contributing to the annals of my passionate three-year affair with “Writing Nights” as my Google Calendar reminds me each Tuesday, I’m sitting still on the outside. Still, on the inside I’m bouncing between competing obligations to prioritize deadlines, courting time in the hopes she’ll favor my attempts … Continue reading If Grammy’s Not in the Garden…
When You’re Not a Mother
I love my mother, but not Mother’s Day. It comes every year. I can set my biological watch by it. Like the incremental changes in my garden that happen while I’m not looking, my dislike of the holiday that began as a small seed years ago now has deep roots and casts an even longer … Continue reading When You’re Not a Mother
And He’ll Do It Again
It’s the first night in a week I haven’t been up on the surgical floor at Sentara tracking my brother’s progress. I feel the need to just be still. The air in the evening calm after the afternoon lightning storm rekindles a creative fire dormant in these days spent pacing, swapping updates, and riding the … Continue reading And He’ll Do It Again
Writer's Growth 