The late-summer sun hung hot over the Blue Ridge, but this little valley was nestled far enough in its shadow that we felt some temporary reprieve. Men with sweat-kissed faces, old college chums maybe, gathered under the tent’s center strumming their banjos and...
This fishing rod was to be an olive branch. On the way out the door to go get it, days before his birthday, we had another rub. The same conflict or a new conflict, I wasn’t sure. They had begun to blend, all of them, into one great echo. Would we ever come out of...
My dad taught me to love the ocean. The smell of salt water is synonymous to me with the smell of his skin, despite the fact that 358 days of the year we were hundreds of miles away from the shore. That one week left an impression that lingered long. My most memorable...
I heard her cries before the clumsy footsteps seeking to keep up with her body’s centrifugal force led her into my kitchen. “It’s ruined, Mommy! I ruined it!” she said, through sobs as she thrust her Bible into my hand. My child who cannot yet...
Doreen* grabbed Lily’s hand and they slid away, around the corner and behind the girls’ dormitory, back for moments into the secret sisterhood of hollow years that only few will ever fully understand. To Lily, this was now her past; to her friend, this was...
“I’m sorry to jump into your conversation,” she said, as she knelt awkwardly over the stiff, high-backed airline seat in front of me, “but I’ve had two miscarriages and all of my friends are having kids and it’s so hard.” Her...
