cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
Just inside the front door of my childhood home is a large built-in bookcase my father made when my parents bought their first house. On the nearby coast, my mother found a beautiful piece of driftwood to fill its center space, making the uniquely shaped object the focal point in our living room. Anything of…
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Show-and-tell Fridays were days my brothers and I lived for as we progressed through grade school. We simply brought our dad. Well known among our peers as the man who brought unusual artifacts and interesting stories of Native American folklore to life, he also brought the pride of his ancestry. He easily looked the part…
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I know next to nothing about hunting, but I know a lot about needlepoint. Many of the hunters I know have trophies on their walls—preserved, marble-eyed animals. I suppose they are a reminder of the many hours spent planning, preparing, hiking, stalking, aiming, shooting, and gutting, then taking the unstuffed body to a taxidermist to…
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It’s a cozy, quiet Sunday morning. I type near the Christmas tree, a sleeping pup curled at my feet and a YouTube fire flickering noiselessly on my TV because my apartment doesn’t have a fireplace. Outside, the world glistens, covered in its first true blanket of snow. These Midwest mornings, the ones that stretch from…
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November is here, and once again, we approach the holiday season. This year brings opportunities that have been missing during the previous twenty-something months. Opportunities that invite us to engage with our whole selves, dysfunction and all.
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“You are one of the bravest people I know,” I squeaked, as tears filled my eyes. She kept my gaze as I spoke a blessing over her cross-country journey into the unknown. Without concrete work and with very temporary housing in place, she was moving back to L.A. after a long COVID relocation. A bright…
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T’is a mother in my life who feels all alone waiting for something completely unknown
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I was a mere 23 years old, and my wonderful future lay ahead of me as I prepared to marry the man of my dreams. He was a naval flight officer—responsible, smart, steady, driven—and a leader who pursued all the golden ideals I desired to build my exemplary life. Unaware at the time, I wanted…
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It’s 3 a.m., and I’m wide awake, tossing and turning like it’s my own signature dance move, all to the tune of grief and fear. Back and forth I spin on the deep gray sheets that prove there is no thread count that can stop my midnight moves. That tune is just too loud. The…
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Since our retirement seven years ago, my husband Jim and I have explored much of the United States. We have lived out of our RV for six months a year, traveling between points A and B. With each back-and-forth trek across the country, our realization grew of how much more there was to see. There…
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