There you stood in your pale green frock with white trim, showing a little age but resolute and desirable still, ready for come what may. You embraced us when we walked inside, asked where we’d been, and so we knew we were yours. We massaged your muscles and traced the contours in your bones with … Continue reading Farewell to Thee, Dear Clapboard New Englander
Memories
Nine-ish years in Vermont: A Retrospective
Woodstock, Vermont It is possible I’m already growing wistful for Vermont, and we still live here, I mused aloud to The Chef a few days ago. Incredulous, he asked, Do you mean to tell me when we’re down in North Carolina, you’ll miss Vermont? Mm-hm, I answered. He’d have face palmed, except we were in … Continue reading Nine-ish years in Vermont: A Retrospective
A Family Memory: Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax and Surprise Connections
From The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, by Dorothy Gillman, 1966 I can still see the dog-eared paperback clear as day on the guest bedroom nightstand in my childhood home in Memphis: a mystery novel by Dorothy Gillman titled The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, my great-grandmother Gracie’s reading selection on that visit. On the book jacket a woman … Continue reading A Family Memory: Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax and Surprise Connections
Frozen Moments: A Memory
Impressionist-like landscape Leaving work last Friday afternoon, and even a couple of moments earlier in the week, I paused to drink in the landscape around our office campus, so eerily quiet just now. It always possesses a bucolic beauty, even on the bleakest winter days. But at some point when I was too preoccupied with … Continue reading Frozen Moments: A Memory
A Christmas Story: Holidays Are Hard
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
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 