As I watched my daughter’s tiny face inspect the mysterious box, I was overcome with the memories of Christmases past. How could an intangible recollection hold such a physical presence, wrapping me in a warm glow while simultaneously strangling me in an icy dread, especially on Christmas morning? Christmas morning. It wasn’t like any Christmas…
I may as well have been standing before them stripped naked. That’s how exposed I felt. The soldiers had announced their arrival with a loud pounding on the front door of our home. A few days prior, my husband and I had begun the official paperwork requesting permission to leave the only country we had…
Althea, September 1966 “James, are you out there?” Althaea and James let go of each other and sat up straight. “It’s okay,” James whispered. “It’s just my mother.” “Your mother?” I didn’t think my heart could beat any faster than it did when I put my head on James shoulder just a few minutes earlier,…
JAMES Ecclesiastes 1:8 No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content. I sat at the library table, waiting for Althaea to choose her latest books to check out, and wondered what it was about this girl that intrigued me. She was different, that…
The back porch hadn’t been invaded yet, so I took up residence there. Since the funeral, the house had been consistently full of people dropping off food and paying their respects. It was strange to see my mother interacting with a room full of strangers, though they all seemed to know her quite well. I tried…
ALTHAEA – September, 1966 I could feel his eyes on me. I pretended I was reading, but every few minutes I would casually glance up to see him watching me from across the room. When he stood, I bolted. James Porter. I had heard there was a new kid in school. I didn’t usually bother…
My hands trembled. The journal slipped to the ground. The way Mrs. Carmichael described my grandmother, always writing, mad me believe this journal was hers. I let the reality register for a moment. This was my mother’s journal. My parents first met when they were just a couple of years older than me. They lived…
Althaea- September, 1966 I saw him exiting the park on his bicycle. He was surrounded by a light that drew my eyes from the sidewalk cracks I was studying as I made my way to the grocery store. I watched him from afar feeling an unfamiliar quiver in my stomach. I’m not one to get…
The dream I had in the treehouse haunted me, but it didn’t stop me from heading back there every chance I got. Today was no different. It was the perfect day to curl up with my sketchbook, and lose myself in the scratching sound of my pencil, as images leaped from my mind to paper.…
LITTLE MISS WORDY 