cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
On a rainy mid-pandemic Sunday afternoon the call came. A mutual Virginia friend uttered the words, “I heard about Charlotte. I know you were dear friends. I’m so sorry.” A driver high on meth had crossed the double yellow lines, hitting her head-on as she drove into town to sing for a virtual church service.…
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Goodbye begins July 27, 2020, with a text. The doctor just called with the scan results, and it’s not good. Can you come over? My brand-new 14-year-old is in the middle of blowing out twisty rainbow candles on an ice cream birthday cake. It is homemade by a sister and looks delicious. We finish singing…
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It has been 40 years since my dad died and almost 25 years since my mom breathed her last. My in-laws have been gone close to two decades. As a young woman, I was already navigating life without any hope of a living presence of my parents. During certain stages of life, this absence has…
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When I was in my mid 20s, a woman at church, who was just a few years older than me, had gone home to bury her mother; her father had died a few years earlier. “I am an orphan,” she said upon her return. I thought it was one of the oddest things I had…
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Our sidewalk was long and meandered in curves as it reached from our porch to the street. It was narrow, as sidewalks were back then when everything seemed to be smaller and much simpler. Our whole yard was hemmed in by berms that could hold back a foot of water. We lived in the old…
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Celebration Joy is happening! My sweet niece, Paige is getting married this month.
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Three days after Christmas in 1999, I found out that my mom had died her in sleep.
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