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the beauty of an ordinary life

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Category: About a boy

5

You work all night, and you sleep all day, and I hardly ever see you. I have only a handful of photographs of you from this entire year, all of them taken on a winter's trip to see my sister. This picture of my nephew with you, in your signature hat and coat, on my … Continue reading 5 →

Jennifer Balink About a boy, Among friends, Family matters 2 Comments June 12, 2019June 12, 2019 1 Minute

6

Memory is a kind of fiction. It's the story we tell ourselves, the one we decide is true because we want it to be true. These stories are my memories of you, of us, in our 20 summers living together under the same roof. These stories are my truth. Fact: By this point in our … Continue reading 6 →

Jennifer Balink About a boy, Among friends, Family matters 7 Comments June 12, 2019June 12, 2019 1 Minute

7

You were sleepy (and a little grumpy) when you came downstairs, into the kitchen, to get something to eat and then go back to bed, because you were still working nights and tired all the time. You said: What are you doing, playing on the computer? I said: I'm not playing; I'm writing. What are … Continue reading 7 →

Jennifer Balink About a boy, Among friends 6 Comments June 11, 2019June 18, 2019 1 Minute

8

This part does not last long: You work nights, so you can pick up the children after school, drive in the carpool line and talk to the teachers. I take the children to school in the mornings, while you are asleep, and we listen to books. You work nights because of retirement benefits and orthodontic … Continue reading 8 →

Jennifer Balink About a boy, Among friends 1 Comment June 11, 2019 1 Minute

9

They didn't know their names, much less how to walk on a leash. They weren't housebroken. They were heartworm positive and required treatment. You said: Put your dogs in the car, and let's go. We had driven down to a rescue group's house in rural Mississippi to check out a pair of chocolate Labs I'd … Continue reading 9 →

Jennifer Balink About a boy, About a dog, Among friends 2 Comments June 10, 2019June 10, 2019 1 Minute

11

We are too old now not to be honest in our retelling of some things, aren't we? And looking back, if we are honest, one of the reasons we stayed in Memphis was because we were waiting for my stepmother to die. Not wanting her to die, of course, but simply waiting as life unfolded, … Continue reading 11 →

Jennifer Balink About a boy, Among friends 1 Comment June 9, 2019June 23, 2019 1 Minute

12

This is the year, a dozen years ago, when we could have escaped. It is so easy to see now, in hindsight, that this was the year to make our getaway, before our children started school, before the market crashed, before you planted crape myrtles and lilies and the Japanese maple. We could have escaped … Continue reading 12 →

Jennifer Balink About a boy, Among friends 5 Comments June 9, 2019June 9, 2019 1 Minute

13

I buy a camera, a digital one, and reopen the musty bag of lenses and gear that has been schlepped from city to city, closet to closet, for more than a decade. You coach t-ball. Your mother visits, sits at the kitchen table with our son, drawing pictures of windmills in orange and blue. Orange … Continue reading 13 →

Jennifer Balink About a boy, Among friends, Motherhood mayhem 2 Comments June 8, 2019June 18, 2019 1 Minute

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I call this dress “The Sound of Music.” If you knew my mother, then you probably don’t need another word of backstory to understand the reference. But for everyone else, the story, as I know it (and who’s to say otherwise, because all the characters are now in the Great Beyond) is this: these curtains belonged to my great-grandmother on my father’s side. Nana had them in the house on Elzey, the one that was big enough to hold all of the then-grown Larkey children and their spouses and children for a little while during the Great Depression. Nana gave the curtains to her daughter who then gave them to my mother when a Christmas Eve fire in our attic left us displaced and my mother and sister (I was in college) moved into a short term rental house two doors down from my great aunt, who helped my mother furnish the rental. My mother gave the curtains to me when I bought my first house. I packed them into a zippered storage bag when I moved to Omaha and then toted them along for all the years that followed, right up until this winter when I was frantically searching for the box of French lace that I saved, from my mother’s sewing things, to make my daughter’s graduation dress. I still haven’t found that lace. The curtains, then, were at first a substitute for the original plan. They were plan B. My mother, the hand-sewing, piano teaching, enterprising writer, always had a plan B (and C, and D, and so on). My hand stitching isn’t as delicate as hers, but I think she’d approve. Who’s to say otherwise?
“Make it pretty on the inside,” that’s what my mama always said.
Tipsy Tumbler just arrived, so it’s a party now! Corner of Peabody and Belvedere (fenced lot - park on Belvedere). We’re here til 4!
Can’t let today end without a little Yoda and Chewbacca. #maythe4thbewithyou
The big dog ❤️ his girl @astrid.balink

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    I call this dress “The Sound of Music.” If you knew my mother, then you probably don’t need another word of backstory to understand the reference. But for everyone else, the story, as I know it (and who’s to say otherwise, because all the characters are now in the Great Beyond) is this: these curtains belonged to my great-grandmother on my father’s side. Nana had them in the house on Elzey, the one that was big enough to hold all of the then-grown Larkey children and their spouses and children for a little while during the Great Depression. Nana gave the curtains to her daughter who then gave them to my mother when a Christmas Eve fire in our attic left us displaced and my mother and sister (I was in college) moved into a short term rental house two doors down from my great aunt, who helped my mother furnish the rental. My mother gave the curtains to me when I bought my first house. I packed them into a zippered storage bag when I moved to Omaha and then toted them along for all the years that followed, right up until this winter when I was frantically searching for the box of French lace that I saved, from my mother’s sewing things, to make my daughter’s graduation dress. I still haven’t found that lace. The curtains, then, were at first a substitute for the original plan. They were plan B. My mother, the hand-sewing, piano teaching, enterprising writer, always had a plan B (and C, and D, and so on). My hand stitching isn’t as delicate as hers, but I think she’d approve. Who’s to say otherwise?
    “Make it pretty on the inside,” that’s what my mama always said.
    Tipsy Tumbler just arrived, so it’s a party now! Corner of Peabody and Belvedere (fenced lot - park on Belvedere). We’re here til 4!
    Can’t let today end without a little Yoda and Chewbacca. #maythe4thbewithyou
    The big dog ❤️ his girl @astrid.balink

    Looking for something?

    Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 7,263 other followers

    Tags

    #nostalgia #WPLongform 20 years in 20 posts aging art blogging books change children Christmas cooking creative brief creativity Daily Post daily writing december sanity dinner dogs DPchallenge eating entertaining faith families family family dinner family meals farmer's market Fiction food friends friendship garden growing up Hipstamatic holiday stress home kitchen life love marriage memoir Memphis mental wellness menu planning menus month in review monthly digest motherhood mothers mothers and daughters NaNoWriMo National Novel Writing Month neighbors new year parenting photography postaday post a day postaweek raising children reading reading recommendations recipes relationships self-care summer Thanksgiving time travel vacation weekly menu women writing year in review young adult fiction
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