cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
“Suck it in girls.” I tighten my core and smile as a group of mothers coach my friends and me on how to stand for our homecoming pictures. As a 33-year-old woman looking back on these photos, I wonder, what was there to make smaller? A 14 year old who had barely passed puberty, I…
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“A turtle got it,” my dad said to me as I looked with utter devastation at the claw marks on my prized watermelon. I was eight years old and had waited months for my favorite fruit to be ready. Days before I got to cut it open, our neighborhood turtles decided to make it their…
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Most of the good things in my life have felt like they didn’t come on time. My friends praised God when they got the text that I came out of anaphylactic shock in the ER as a nurse gave me a shot of epinephrine for an allergy I suddenly discovered I had in my thirties.…
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I have a soft spot for bluegrass. I played in an Appalachian ensemble in college, and ever since then have found comfort in the music’s brash harmonies and communal energy. As I stroll down the main street of a small town in North Carolina with a good friend, I feel my heart stir at the…
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Sex and food, I’ve heard, are the two greatest human pleasures in life. I find myself ruminating on this thought as I slowly peruse the items stocked at my local grocery store. I start to tear up as I smell the freshly-baked baguettes, and walk past the table laden with various types of cheeses. As…
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“You can take off your mask now and check your hair and your lips,” the photographer says as I get ready to take my headshots for work. Check my lips? Oh, right. Women wear lipstick. “My lips always look the same, so they should be fine,” I quip back. As I glance in the mirror, I…
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My roommate Emily gets home from work earlier than I expect and knocks gently on my door asking, “Are you ok?”. “Don’t come in,” I try to sound as normal as possible, swallowing my tears before they escape me. I’m thrown off balance. I intended to get all my feelings out before she got home—to…
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I stood in the spotlight, strumming the first four chords I’d ever learned on guitar over and over and over again. I couldn’t remember the first note of the song. I’d been playing guitar for over ten years, having played in front of people hundreds of times. A minute went by. Another minute passed and no notes came. One…
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