This is a night I want to remember. It started like this: It was light and warm, the sun still out. We were all out walking our dogs, all the neighbors, and walking our legs, and getting some fresh air, tired of being inside, weighted down. Then walking led to sitting on a porch, just … Continue reading A night to remember.
Were your holidays magical? The stuff of Disney and Hallmark movies, only more so? Ah, good on you! I'm tickled. As for us? Well, My sister and her crew gave me the best Christmas present I could ever want and spent the holidays with us, here in our house, all of us together for the … Continue reading A few things: December 2019
A neighbor stoops to pet my dog (our dog, the littlest of our three), greeting him by name. It is a cool, but not chilly, late fall afternoon, children playing in their yards, lights beginning to turn on behind windows, streets laced with dog walkers out for a pre-dinner stroll. One of the children, a … Continue reading Many happy returns.
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
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
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
When my mother died, you and a friend (a very good friend) loaded her furniture and books and clothes on a flatbed trailer and drove them to our new house, even though it wasn't quite ready yet. You packed it all, even her unmentionables, and hauled it by hand, without complaint, in the dark. You … Continue reading 14
We're going to need a bigger house, I said. You were not sure. The people who built this house and lived here for 52 years, the people who planted the twin dogwood trees in the front yard, they raised two children in this house, you said. But both children were girls, I reminded you. Our … Continue reading 16
