Memphis, once known as the hardwood capital of the world, was built on a bluff, the Chickasaw Bluff, along the eastern side of the Mississippi River. The soil on the bluff, according to my limited understanding of it, is an interesting mix of loess (windblown silt), glacial gravel and alluvial deposits, good for filtering water…
Tag Archives: aging
Not tedious, but brief.
For the past few weeks I’ve been in the good company of more than 200 million people around the world, all of us still hearing the lingering echoes of John B. McLemore and Brian Reed, seeing ghost images of clocks and sundials and tattoos, and a maze…. As you know either very well or not…
The comfort of familiar things.
I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo. If we know each other, in real life, then this revelation may be shocking. If we know each other very well, though, then it’s possibly not unexpected. I have been thinking about it, a tattoo, though not terribly seriously, for longer than I’ll admit, even here. Tattoos, like…
Happy.
After her fifth or sixth miscarriage, my mother, resigned to the reality that a baby might not be in the cards, went with my father to the animal shelter and came home with a puppy. Without much debate they named the small, black-and-white ball of fur Happy, partly because the dog’s mouth was shaped in…
Life begins at 50.
The third thing she told me was that life begins at 50. She said this just to me, out of earshot from my traveling companion, as she was tucking me back into the driver’s seat, right before she said, “I love you,” which is what she always said at the end. We had been together…
This old house.
If we were to start anew, we might do it all differently, bolstered by knowing. We might be less like first-time lovers or new puppies, fumbling between tentative and exuberant. We might first take stock in ourselves, be realistic about our imprinting. We might bow first, out of respect, thinking less about how each could…
Warning.
This story will be less risqué than you might fear, or hope: I bought myself, sort of by accident, a purple lace bra for Christmas. We were out looking for stocking stuffers and standard Santa fare, my daughter and I, trying to get it all done in one single open-air-mall expedition because I quite hate…
On lemons, lessons, love.
I don’t want to jinx things or tempt fate, but it’s looking like I will make it through 2015 and into a new year. Which means it’s about the time that I normally compile and share my 50 Happy Things list, the time-limited, year-in-review free-write that I started a couple of years ago to give…
