cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
At my dermatologist’s office, I focus on the smell of the Sharpie she is using to circle areas of concern. As a skin cancer doctor in the Sunshine State, she is trained with a meticulous eye to incise and biopsy anything that is not an A+ mole. While I’m thankful for her fastidious care, this…
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“There will be a procedure. They are checking out what is going on in his lungs,” she mentions one rainy April evening. My shoe heels click as we walk down the sterile, grey halls of the big city hospital. Someone makes a joke to try to ease the tension we feel in our bodies. My…
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It’s late. Amidst moving boxes, I’m trying to squeeze a bit of time in to tell you a story about how joy is an act of beautiful rebellion. But it turns out that writing about joy when it feels rebellious is really, really difficult. I’m tired, a little frightened, and sad. And tonight, writing about…
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I walked into the classroom feeling a sense of anticipation, my first in-person class in almost two years after COVID forced my graduate program online. Eager to finally see my classmates, I looked around the room expectantly, finding a few familiar faces and quite a few I didn’t recognize. Knowing that group assignments were on the…
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Some hunt to kill; some to survive and protect. Shards of piercing words flew across the room at her. There was no point in running. She had been captured, and the gunfire from his vocal cords was incessant. Standing, she took the blows, her body numbing with the painful sensation of a thousand paper cuts…
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The sun dances across my lap. The old Honda’s engine revs and releases around the curves of Lake Crescent. Turquoise waters on my right shimmer clearly against the evergreens next to its shore. I count the logs cast aside into the lake’s bottomless waters. Just past the upcoming campground we will take a hard right…
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Legends are made this way. Legends are borne in the small, tiny stories, the kind that stick year after year—where there is always more to tell, but you cannot get there because this particular part is just too good.
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God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.—Psalm 46 It’s an odd choice, agreeing to join this…
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Every day for the last year, I put my hair into a long ponytail and adjust a mask over my face. Never before has such a small piece of cloth meant so much. It’s a daily reminder to me of how life has changed.
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I was cold before I even saw the table. It loomed large in the white-washed room. All around stood shadowy strangers, watching as I hovered in the doorway. Hands twitching at my side, gooseflesh along my skin, I hesitated. I was no one to them. I knew exactly what they saw: another in a long…
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