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Don't Call Me a Hillbilly

Don’t Call Me a Hillbilly

I am not a complainer. When I was simplifying the landscaping around my house last year, I shoveled at least ten tons of gravel. I never complained that, because I am a single woman, there was no obvious man to whom I could conveniently delegate that task. Instead of complaining, I shoveled. I apply the same theory when there is snow in my very long, steep driveway. I shovel. In the past, I…

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skirt! Magazine Publishes "You Should Go Home Again"

skirt! Magazine Publishes “You Should Go Home Again”

The May issue of skirt! Magazine includes my essay “You Should Go Home Again,” which is a tribute to my mother. I believe she would have been pleased. The link will take you to the May issue; the essay is printed on page 35. The theme for the month was The Magnificent Issue with a focus on mothers in honor of Mother’s Day.

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You. Are. So. Badass.

Remember when you were at your 25th college reunion? You were feeling a smidge sorry for yourself because your circumstances weren’t exactly what you had hoped they would be at this juncture. Someone who either worked in the White House or is a movie star or possibly both asks what you are doing in that little town in Kentucky that the New York Times portrayed as full of sawmills and aluminum…

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skirt! Magazine Publishes For the Love of a Tomato

skirt! Magazine’s June/July 2016 issue includes my essay For the Love of a Tomato: https://issuu.com/skirt/docs/sk616/38?e=1153789/35951868.

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Ascending (or Troughs Are for Pigs)

During an economic recession, much anticipation centers on identifying the point at which it ends. When is there sufficient growth to demonstrate that the economy is in the infant stages of an upward trajectory? No longer languishing in the trough that symbolizes the worst of a recession, we are movin’ on up a la George and Weezy. As we’ve seen in recent years, however, recoveries aren’t…

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I Am Here

My sweet friend asks, “How are you?” The question prompts me to look around for my bag of stock responses. Should I say, “moving forward” or “getting by”? A favorite is “trying to make progress.” As with many life circumstances, however, those four words don’t begin to tell the whole story. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King wrote “[h]uman progress never rolls in on wheels…

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The Things I Carry

Yesterday evening I read Tim Lawrence’s blog post Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason. The piece was thought-provoking and there were a number of quotable segments. However, two sentences touched my heart. Their inevitability, as displayed in my own life, brought tears to my eyes and each time I stirred last night (which, these days, is often) they came to mind: “Some things in life cannot be…

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Virginia Faye Reeder

Below is a link to the obituary for my lovely mother. I am profoundly grateful that her passing occurred in the most gentle and peaceful way I could have imagined. She died in my home, which she loved, surrounded by her children. http://www.lanestuckygray.com/notices/VirginiaFaye-Reeder

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On Trees

Tree roots anchor a tree in the soil. Large roots branch out into small roots, small roots into even tinier roots and these tiny roots into hair-like shoots. The tendrils entangle themselves in the earth, becoming inextricably attached to the fragments of soil in which they are encased. The soil cannot move. The tree cannot move. And so they hold each other. My mother and I have held each…

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Monday Morning Missive

It is Monday and the voice from Saturday night’s dream is still with me. I insisted that he leave by dawn, but he lingered. He is persistent. He always was. He can smell my fear and self-hatred and they are so very compelling. Like a yellow jacket at a picnic, he hovers and threatens undeterred. I am mesmerized. And in the cold darkness, I find it impossible to turn away.

But now it is Monday…

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Bittersweet Cherries

In his poem “Fall,” the great Kentucky poet Wendell Berry writes:

The wild cherries ripen, black and fat,

Paradisal fruits that taste of no man’s sweat.

Reach up, pull down the laden branch, and eat;

When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet.

The idea of finding the silver lining in a set of difficult circumstances is something I have written about in other posts. But, I was…

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Mother Teresa, Christmas Lights and Softening

A wise friend predicted that once we moved to Kentucky, once we had a chance to settle in, once I could rest for a while, I would begin to “soften.” As someone who lived a lifetime of uncertainty in, say, the first 18 years of my life, I have a strong appreciation for certainty – and more certainty. When I’m dealing with uncertainty, my brother has been known to say in what he thinks is his…

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Blackberry Preserves

We never had enough money or sophistication to own a candy thermometer when I was growing up. When my mother made fudge, one of her specialties, and needed to figure out if it had reached the “soft ball” stage, she would drop a small spoonful of the boiling candy mixture into ice water. If she could collect it into a “soft ball” with her fingers, it was done. She used a similar technique with…

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Being

Sorry. Really. Many people were kind enough to share how much they enjoyed this blog. And, then, after all of the hullaballoo about the move, just when you wanted to know what was behind Door #3, I disappeared.

I tried. I started a few posts. But none of them moved me. Truly, I didn’t have the heart to force myself to finish. I have reached a hard stop on berating the soft part of myself until…

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Goodbye, California My morning walk last Friday was unspectacular. At 5 a.m., not surprisingly, the neighborhood was quiet. I jaywalked with impunity and sang the John Prine songs I was listening to a little louder than I would have later in the day.

skirt! Magazine Publishes "Good Girl Gone"

skirt! Magazine Publishes “Good Girl Gone”

The July issue of skirt! Magazine includes my essay “Good Girl Gone.” This link is for the entire magazine; the essay is printed on page 30. Yay!

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The Agony of an Untold Story

The stories demand a telling. They call for acknowledgment. Some remind me that they have been waiting patiently for many years. And, they are growing discontented. Even in their discontent, however, they are reasonable. They offer a trade: healing in exchange for being shared.

Zora Neale Hurstonwrote, “there is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” I feel an intimate burden…

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