On our way to a concert in Chapel Hill my girls and I ran through the drive through at that Most Holiest of All Fast Food restaurants (you know the one). As we wound through the line and passed the gigantic glass-enclosed petri-dish called a play set, my daughter said “I wish we had known … More The Last Time
Last night we were able to get together with some old friends and spend a few hours catching up over good food and drink, laughs and games. Our families have known one another for a long time, going all the way back to BK days (before kids), and as a result our kids quite literally … More The Long Letting Go Called Parenthood
It’s as cliche’ as cliche’ can get but I’ll say it anyway: this year absolutely flew by. A year ago we loaded the moving truck and were on our way to NC from Oklahoma. 2021 ended with us coming home after 5 years, and though we were sad to be leaving family and friends behind, … More It’s the End of the Year as We Know It and I Feel Fine
It’s not a very stylish clock by modern standards. It has a definite Victorian vibe to it: made entirely of oak with lots of turnings and carvings. It was my Grandparent’s, on my father’s side, and once hung at the far end of their living room, just to the right of the window which housed … More Keeping Time
I knew it was bad but I didn’t want to believe it was that bad. Yet deep down I suspected it was. I shoved the thought away with every uncharacteristic wobble, every meal skipped, every pound lost. In the end, it was shocking but not unexpected: our beloved dog Chewy had a tumor on his liver, … More Saying Goodbye
After we moved into our home here in NC we found ourselves in need of a new washer and dryer. This was not a surprise, as we had sold the set we used in Oklahoma to our landlord when we moved out. They were bought used (at a great price), and had served us … More Life, Laundry and the Love of Parents
“When you’re in your 20s, you think you’ve got all the time in the world. You get older, and you go through a quickening. Everything seems to get faster.” Colin Hay, singer/songwriter When I read this quote it stopped me in my tracks. Not because it was shocking or I hadn’t thought of it, but … More The Quickening
If you were to press rewind on my life and go back 30-some odd years, you’d hear me telling anyone who’d listen how Oklahoma was where I belonged, and how I couldn’t wait to move back once I finished high school. We had moved to NC from OK when I was 14, and I did … More Hiraeth
There are times I have to stop and think what year it is. Am I alone in this? 2021 has gone by so incredibly fast, it’s almost as if it didn’t happen. And yet here we are, recovering from feasting on Thanksgiving and staring down the Holidays and the culmination of yet another trip ’round … More Thankfuls
Henry Mathias Dalton. The Reverend H.M. Dalton. Mac. Daddy. He had many names. Which one you used depended on how you knew him. I just called him Papa. He was born at the start of the 20th century, in 1911. His mother died in 1922, after which he and his 7 siblings were shuffled … More Papa
The Wading Pool 