Momma fell in love with this pink fabric when I made a skirt from it a few years ago. So, when I found some more of it I made her a Bow Tucks bag for Mother's Day.
An Emporia, VA sunset. In the run of things, 2024 was one of the hardest years of my life. It began with a friend dying unexpectedly, and it ended with a new heart wound that I'm still processing. It's been dark around here these days. It's been dark for ages, actually. My Dad's cancer was confirmed before Thanksgiving, the Wednesday the week before, to be precise. In a phone call, as he was driving home (and stopping to see my Mom), I called him, and he told me. He'd barely found out himself. Then . . . Then, I made a phone call to an old friend of mine. Little did I know that act would undo me. Back in 2020, shortly after my sister passed, I was told that when it came to the heartbreaking, bad news, we called each other . . . no more texting things like "my sister has cancer" and "my sister died." It made sense; she insisted that we call from now on. In all these years of being separated by ocean and ...
I've been writing again, and here's something different. Vignettes and notes from the long piece I'm finishing this week. Sometimes, the fiction we write can leave marks. Deep marks. While in Greece I've been working on the day job and getting back to my roots and me. Enjoy the notes and windows into the next phase. Next time I'll pull out the notes on dating again. Joy. Now there's an absolute joy, so much that at one point I forgot how to speak English at the luscious advances of an American in Greece. (Note the dripping sarcasm). Greece has my heart in many ways, even with a stress and workload--this year--of epic proportions. I am obsessed with life here, I keep coming back, and it feels like home time and time again. Since that first voyage in 2013, when my best friend had to drag me back on the ferry to Turkey, to now when I wander Athens. I stroll along these streets with such ease, knowing this c...
Two weeks into a six-week solo voyage, I finally felt my nervous system start to settle. Settle after nine months of constant alert, nine months of wonder, nine months of life on hold. Since April, my Dad's throat cancer has been clear, but the lung is being watched, and the trach had to come out weeks after the last radiation. My Mom has been holding her own. They're stable, and for the most part, my autoimmune chaos has been manageable. Mom and Dad needed me here, in the states, so I took a few weeks this summer to scratch off a handful of National Parks and a dream--long overdue--road trip I've long talked about. So, two weeks into a six-week hiking trip, I finally felt myself settle. The solitude has been a welcome relief from nights and days of endless dark wonder. In Montana, after visiting Kansas City, Wind Cave and the Badlands in South Dakota, Yellowstone and Grand Teton, and Custer State Park (SD), I felt myself...
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