Madame Chairperson had busied herself all morning with the Rolodex on the massive mahogany desk in her new office, just after she tired of fingering her brass nameplate. She’d pulled it closer, the better to spin the wheel thingummie and watch all the cards flutter. And because it turned both ways (a discovery that delighted her to no end), she had experimented with it, observing … Continue reading Morning Miniature: Madame Chairperson’s Dilemma
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms There was … Continue reading Reflection: No Use Crying
The season has changed and suddenly I find myself anticipating the holidays. I am the first to condemn the world for jumping the gun on every ‘Hallmark’ holiday, to thumb my nose at Halloween swag on store shelves in August and Christmas décor in October, and so this mood is unusual for me. I offer only the paltry excuse that a sense of nostalgia settled … Continue reading Sunday Almanac: It Is Good to Be Home
Cross the Mason-Dixon line driving north through Virginia (and a small, weirdo finger of West Virginia) and you enter Pennsylvania’s topographically interesting southern reaches, with the Appalachians all around, and the northernmost outpost of Krispy Kreme Donuts in Scranton, home of the fictitious and also delicious Dunder Mifflin. It is what we did Monday afternoon, arriving at Fallen Tree Farm near Carlisle well before nightfall … Continue reading Travelogue: We Three Land in Carlisle
Over the course of the long holiday weekend I have fairly devoured this novel by Catherine Newman, whose main character and plot resonate with me in 10,000 kinds of ways. The setting for her story is a favorite summer vacation rental on Cape Cod where the protagonist-narrator, a menopausal mom, has returned for a week (the standard annual stay) with her husband and now-grown children, … Continue reading Reflection: Can We at Least Finish This Thing?
How could anyone be expected to do this without breaking down. The question had echoed inside her head for the last hour, since she first unbuttoned her cuffs, rolled up her sleeves, and gingerly lowered her aching joints to the floor. Now she sat cross-legged in front of an open plastic bin; condensation slowly crept down the geometric panels on a glass of iced tea … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 6.22.25
During my early elementary school years in Memphis, Tennessee, seems like every child around me showed up to class at one point or another grinning ear to ear, eager to announce the arrival of a new infant sibling in the house. Then on a special afternoon that kid’s mama would step into our cinder-brick public school classroom holding the swaddled infant whilst the older brother … Continue reading Reflection: Siblings
Who are your people? probed the ancient woman, one hand on her waspy-thin waistline and the other sweeping a lock of white hair out of her eyes. It was an inquisition, the younger of the two realized, shifting her weight uncomfortably in the sweltering afternoon heat, and swinging a fidgety and irritable toddler to the other hip. While she sized up the elder, her mind’s … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature: Your People
Earlier Carole had tugged at the shirt that was a skosh too tight around her breasts, which resulted in an unattractive pucker stretching from one to the other. She knew it looked awful but decided it did not matter for fifteen minutes inside the grocery store. And anyway, the short-shorts she was wearing under it accentuated her long, sinewy leg line, exaggerated even more by … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 5.4.25: Chance Encounter
Honey-golden, irregular cleaving, sticky, crunchy underfoot crust born of pine sap. The small rectangular wood rosin box tucked into a corner of the massive classroom, toted to the stage for theatre week, at once shimmering and powdery. Pliant dancer feet squeezed like gloved hands into satiny pointe shoes ripped, broken, and pieced back together just so, the shod feet standing in the box, wiggling around, … Continue reading Sensorial Memory: Inside Mom’s Dance Bag
Carolina Thinklings 