hold your loved ones close I stood at the bathroom sink early Friday morning and felt tears welling in my eyes, fought them, and then finally relented and let them flow. A short while later I emerged sweet smelling but a tad puffy in the face, ready to push up my sleeves and start the … Continue reading Journal Entry: Salve for a World Unglued
Knoxville
Journal Entry: The Pandemic Inspires a Conversation
Before all this happened, I was already reflecting on this notion, that in the intervening eight years between living through the kind of loss I think of as the emotional equivalent of blunt force trauma, and life as it is right now, my take on things has changed. Not everything. Some losses were undeniably horrible, … Continue reading Journal Entry: The Pandemic Inspires a Conversation
Sunday Journal Entry: Staying True to Intentions
Sunday, February 9th, 2020, and we’ve settled into mid-winter in Vermont, the moment when Christmas 2019 is already a distant memory, but the first tender shoots poking up through the earth are still weeks or even months away, never mind the vernal equinox: We’re on our own time up here. Somebody warned me about long … Continue reading Sunday Journal Entry: Staying True to Intentions
The Essence of Us
For days stretching into a couple of weeks now, I’ve been working on deep cleaning and reorganizing the creamy yellow office space at the top of our steps, a small but sunny room I share with The Chef—his desk situated at one end and mine at the other like a pair of bookends, with … Continue reading The Essence of Us
Travel Journal: Knoxville in a Day
I feel less connected to Knoxville every time I go back there, a thing that makes me all kinds of sad, but also somehow helps propel me forward, make my peace with where I am now. Don’t get me wrong: I shall never be a proper Yankee, but will remain forever a Southerner, wherever I … Continue reading Travel Journal: Knoxville in a Day
Travel Story: Road Trip to Tennessee the WPA Way
Looky what came in last week’s mail. The only thing better would have been stumbling across this in a Vermont antique store or at a local tag sale. Well, that, and maybe a first edition, instead of this third edition. I did locate a first edition in excellent shape in another online vendor’s inventory, evidently … Continue reading Travel Story: Road Trip to Tennessee the WPA Way
Easter Story: When Buildings Are More Than Mere Buildings
Today I attended an exquisite Easter Sunday service at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in my little Vermont hometown, but in the midst of the gorgeous music and liturgy couldn’t help thinking about Notre Dame Cathedral and the people of France. When I was a young undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee, I took an … Continue reading Easter Story: When Buildings Are More Than Mere Buildings
Morning Miniature 4.19.19
Were you to wander through a particular grand neighborhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, you might stop and stare in bewildered awe at the specimen trees there, old-growth trees. And in springtime the bounty of flowering trees would not escape you, the area’s signature pink and white dogwoods to be sure, but so many others festooned in … Continue reading Morning Miniature 4.19.19
Parenting Story, Part the Second: When A Thousand Miles Separate You From Your Sick Kid
Turns out, the universe was listening last week when I suggested it’s impossible always to protect your child. Especially when he is 26 and presumably the captain of his own ship—and he lives in Tennessee and you live way up in Vermont. Five o’clock a.m. on Wednesday came the messages, one after another, lighting up … Continue reading Parenting Story, Part the Second: When A Thousand Miles Separate You From Your Sick Kid
Parenting Story: Difficult Children, Interesting People
I was chatting with a colleague last week about raising a boy with attention deficit disorder, and all the challenges that come in that package, and how it looks when the boy becomes an adult man and starts making his own decisions about important things in his life. Or at least how it looks in … Continue reading Parenting Story: Difficult Children, Interesting People
Sycamore Stories 