The Keepers of Magic

In the gathering dark of a summer night, the boy runs in circles under pear trees, the air heavy with the grinding screech of thirteen-year cicadas. He was not a thought in anyone’s head when these insects filled the summer nights on their last go ‘round. His parents and his aunt were teenagers –– preening, kissing, driving blurs […]

Luscious Lloyds, Good Medicine

The Tzutujil Maya of Guatemala say that dreaming is one wing of a butterfly and waking is the other.  Each wing tells half the story of life to the other, mirroring each other ceaselessly to keep aloft.  It is at the heart where the two wings meet, that the substance of us is ripened.” – […]

Woman Who Ran with the Wolf

I rescued a wolf.  Or should I say, she rescued me? Shiloh’s life converged with mine when  her wild, gold eyes met my brown ones through a chain-link fence in Mississippi and we were both forever changed.   She was held by a short chain and I by my own pain and thoughts of limitation […]

This Little Light of Mine: Thoughts on Ego Wrangling

When I told my good old friend M, (who is featured somewhat prominently in the book) about my forthcoming publishing deal, she did not hesitate in her response. “Well, well, well. . . “ she drawled, sounding bemused, “Won’t this be an exercise in keeping the old ego in check.” She knows me well.  She […]

Be Good, Be True

Watching my youngest daughter nursing my grandson in the chair in which I nursed her a quarter of a century ago, time bends and I see back and back and even further back- me nursing her, my mother and me, my grandmother and my mother and so on, like nested matryoshka dolls. . . Be […]

Blog Monster

There are so many things about writing a book that are not what I expected. When I finished the first draft of the manuscript of my memoir, We End in Joy: Memoirs of a First Daughter, and mailed it to the publisher, in my naivete I thought I was finished.  I whooped and hollered and […]