Have you ever fixated on a simple word until it’s no longer recognizable? The word desk, for example, is a four-letter word that means “a table, frame, or case with a sloping or horizontal surface especially for WRITING and reading and often with drawers, compartments, and pigeonholes,” so says Merriam Webster. Roll around the word … Continue reading Shape Shifting Words and Other Moving Truths
Family
Find a Penny
You are a hoverer, I said to the twenty-something this morning, aware of his presence just behind and to the left of me while I was kneading biscuit dough. A what? A hoverer: whatever I’m doing, there you are, hovering like a helicopter. The other morning you were standing there at the bathroom door talking … Continue reading Find a Penny
Hole in That Theory: B & W Challenge Day 7
Birds around here fall silent in winter, but this summer and fall the woods around this little cottage have resonated with so much birdsong at times that we've raised a fist skyward: trying to sleep, here—can you please keep it down? A parliament of owls lives in our trees. That's what you call a group … Continue reading Hole in That Theory: B & W Challenge Day 7
October in Vermont: Season of ‘Lasts’
It’s unfair to name October a season, which more properly belongs to fall. But it does mark a big transition in these parts, a time beyond which the air feels more authentically like winter to a person with Southern roots. Not once in the five Vermont winters I’ve seen have we missed a respectable snowfall—a … Continue reading October in Vermont: Season of ‘Lasts’
Scout’s Big Epiphany
Whatever life experiences shaped Scout-the-Lab before he came to us last December, there is this one truth about him, and about all dogs says the vet: they forget nothing. Scout’s skittishness is authentic, part and parcel of who he is. I may have envisioned a goofy, tail-wagging demeanor in my early quest for this dog, … Continue reading Scout’s Big Epiphany
Dogged Adventures: Where the South Begins
Just a few yards past mile marker 152 and nine tenths on Virginia’s southbound Interstate 81 stands a tall clump of vegetation completely engulfed in kudzu—fully involved, the fire department would say—like some unfortunate character from Middle Earth awaiting release from a centuries-long curse, or maybe more like the creatures the White Witch turned to … Continue reading Dogged Adventures: Where the South Begins
Family Vacations: The Summers of My Discontent
Nothing sends me into a tailspin faster than a technological mishap: this would include power outages and car problems, to say nothing of broken laptops. I’ve been in a tailspin since the first week in August, the week my shiny new laptop failed catastrophically on a Saturday morning, an incident that prompted a series of … Continue reading Family Vacations: The Summers of My Discontent
Literary Devices
About a year or so ago my sister-in-law back ‘home’ in Tennessee observed an endearing habit in my brother. From an adjoining room she could hear him plunking out something on a computer keyboard. Only he was not typing the way somebody, you know, normal, would: his technique was more like firing off a weapon … Continue reading Literary Devices
Live Your Life: A Mother’s Reflection
Live your life, live your life, live your life.—Maurice Sendak It’s Mother’s Day, a Hallmark-y holiday. Flowers will be dispensed, brunches eaten, and everywhere priests will stand at the pulpit and spin out sermons on the importance of mothers for the umpteenth time; they’ll repeat them next month but insert the word “fathers.” I had … Continue reading Live Your Life: A Mother’s Reflection
Simple Living versus Excess (or How Not to be Insufferable)
It's dang cold in Vermont. Last week's record-breaking warm temperatures were but a tease: we woke up to 2° this morning. Still, I managed to run with Scout on Friday after work in frigid air with a bitter wind in my face (his ears were all aflap). On a positive note, I captured the moment he discovered a … Continue reading Simple Living versus Excess (or How Not to be Insufferable)
Sycamore Stories 