Everett has been away from us now for five months, one week and four days. I didn’t know the exact count until preparing to write that first sentence: I haven’t been marking the calendar with an x every day; I haven’t been keeping a countdown. Which isn’t to say I don’t miss him, that we don’t miss […]
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Lately I am thinking of contingency. Standing in her office, my editor reminded me that writing is a job just as ditch-digging is. The ditch must be dug. Must not also the writing be written? She is right, of course. The ditch-digger goes to work and digs her ditch; so must the writer go to […]
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Healing Maddie Brees and I are headed to another book club tonight. I am very much looking forward to it. It’s tricky, though: when invited, I always tell my host that I recognize the liability. Having an author present for her book’s discussion can decidedly hamper dialogue and limit expression: how many attendees will be willing […]
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His email arrived sometime in May, or maybe late April. An invitation. He’s a writer, a someday filmmaker, and he wanted to talk Art. I’ve known Joel since he was born, I guess. His family and ours go to the same church; his age falls just between that of Everett and Emma. I’m sure they […]
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It has always been the field at the bottom of our neighborhood, the backyard of the community pool. Earliest memory finds us there with baby William at his first Easter, eight months old and unable to walk and sitting in the sand that is the volleyball court. We were late for the egg hunt, but […]
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This is the picture window in our breakfast room. It hasn’t always looked like this. I don’t think we wrote on it–ever–until Emma was home-schooled in the 7th grade. That’s when she helped me see that this window would make an excellent substitute for a white board. And so, throughout her three years of home-school, […]
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Lately I dream in babies. Almost always they are my own, earlier incarnations of these same beings who, even now–at eighteen, and sixteen, and fourteen–do much to order my day. A week ago it was Emma, suddenly arriving while I visited with a friend who was in the midst of moving house. Boxes and displaced […]
Read more“I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.” -Jeremiah 9:24 The Bible tells me that God is kind. This, of course, among a multitude of other qualities that He doesn’t so much possess as He defines by virtue of His existence. (And that is enough to […]
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We are gearing up for a big transition at our house: In less than forty-eight hours, Will will be on his way to Madagascar, and we will be navigating life as a family of five– minus one.This means that there’s lots to do these days, and there’s lots to think about. Around the errands and […]
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http://nintendoenthusiast.com/feature-articles/zombies-on-nintendo-systems-through-the-generations/5490/ I have an excellent imagination. This is a great quality when casting about for a new bit of character development for a novel, but it’s a perfect nightmare when, say, I’ve made the foolish decision to watch The Ring. Yes, I saw it back there in the early 2000’s, on DVD and in the comfort of […]
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