A few days ago something or other I saw on the telly prompted me to hop onto the web and find out who’s living in my erstwhile home in Tennessee now—whether it’s the same people who bought it at auction in 2012, mere moments before the bank would’ve foreclosed on it, as it turns out. … Continue reading A Christmas Story: Holidays Are Hard
Memories
Journal Entry: Confessions of a Christmas Control Freak
Is there any time better for derailing a self-proclaimed control freak than the holidays? I mean the Christmas holidays, and not the beachy summer vacation I’ve been coveting since we had our first cold snap, and forget about poetic hoary frost: I’m talking single digits, when the deck boards outside our back door explode as … Continue reading Journal Entry: Confessions of a Christmas Control Freak
Story of Renewal: Wiping the Slate Clean
That ingenious little device, the Etch A Sketch, saved me on more than one occasion during childhood: trapped in the back seat of my parents’ sedan, weary of reading or coloring, riding shotgun with a bothersome younger brother all the way from Memphis across the states of Arkansas and then Texas, I could occupy myself … Continue reading Story of Renewal: Wiping the Slate Clean
Nostalgic Story: High-Waisted Trousers and Sensible Boots
“This is better than Saks Fifth Avenue,” quipped the well-heeled older woman when the two of us bumped elbows examining rustic pottery mixing bowls and honey pots. One look at her and you could tell she’d seen the inside of Saks and probably others of its ilk, and many times. “Anyway,” she went on, “you … Continue reading Nostalgic Story: High-Waisted Trousers and Sensible Boots
A Food Memory: Do You Cook with Your Kids?
“You must know a lot about Southern cooking.” Chef David’s voice came cracking across the miles, over the Green Mountains, through an iffy cellular connection that tied me to him, from the Upper Valley all the way down to the Southwest corner of the state. I barely knew him at the time, but we clocked … Continue reading A Food Memory: Do You Cook with Your Kids?
Artifact Story: Found Objects
I stood in my friend Jane’s big, open kitchen in Knoxville one morning nearly a decade ago gazing upward at a particular skylight over the adjacent living area. Several other friends stood there with me, our hands on our hips and our brows furrowed, trying to get a better look. A moment earlier one of … Continue reading Artifact Story: Found Objects
The Stories Our Scars Tell
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, goes the saying. When my kiddo was only a peanut he took a bad spill in the foyer of our Knoxville home and landed face first on an unforgiving surface. His cheek met the pointy corner of a single step leading from the foyer into the kitchen of … Continue reading The Stories Our Scars Tell
Sycamore Stories 