Dearest Gram,
It’s been an eternity since I wrote to you. It’s been an eternity since you left.
So much has happened. I’m a wife now. A small tragedy from which I will never recover is that you weren’t here to meet him. Continue reading
family
happy, happy birthday, baby.
i turned 34 this week. the estrogen-compelled ageist in me bemoaned the fact, condemning the gray hairs abounding along my middle part (of course. of course they sprout up in the exact place they would be most noticeable), and my metabolism, aka the physiological version of a last-picked-in-P.E. loser, no longer able to sprint through any of my all-you-can-eat culinary acquisitions the way it used to. but, the Moonriver cantillating, stained-glass reverie dwelling, heartsome part of me reveled in the blessing of another year on a planet so apt to provide. aside from grateful communion with my God, i felt there was no better way to express my thankful wonder at the world then by composing a list of 34 reasons why I am so very glad to be alive and well. Continue reading
Raised On Rock
“It’s great to be here. It’s great to be anywhere.”
-Keith Richards
Keith Richards turns an immortal 71 today. I wrote this for him.
And for my dad. And for me.
Anais Nin said, “we write to taste life twice”, and I say that perhaps we write to taste it twice, and then read those words over and over to dine on life for the rest of our days. Perhaps we write to create appendages to things, and moments, and feelings already beautiful in their own right.
Apron Strings
“For this child I prayed.” 1 Samuel 1:27
I promise I will always have pennies in my coin purse in case we happen upon a fountain, for I will never stand for you missing out on anything upon which you can attach a wish. I promise to let you stay home from school every January 8th, and we will have Elvis sandwiches and watch his movies all day long. (We will tell your teachers it is a religious holiday.) Continue reading
Anything That’s Part of You
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies… It doesn’t matter what you do…so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”
–Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
I define truth as anything you believe to your core. It doesn’t matter what evidence or lack thereof is there; if you feel it in your bones, that’s all that matters. Continue reading
Forget Me Never
Waitin’ ’round the bend.
My huckleberry friend,
Moonriver, and me.”
-Henry Mancini
There is this thing about me. I do not feel things passively. Feelings usually pass through me like thunderstorms.
Girl: Happy
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
-Emily Dickinson
Kurt Vonnegut once said, “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim, or murmur, or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” I thought of this quote not long ago during one such moment, and I did just that- it wasn’t an emphatic exclamation, but a contented vocalization: “I’m happy.” And that was the first time I can ever recall recognizing happiness at it’s exactness.
By and By, Part II (For Uncle Brad)
“I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man;
like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.”
-Bob Dylan
-Bob Dylan
Three years ago on this exact day, I met with an emotion never before introduced to me. I still don’t have a name for it. It was a concrete intangibility of anguish to which, until that moment, I had always been a stranger. Continue reading
How’s the World Treating You?
“Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.”
-W.T. Purkiser
The golden-deliciousness of falling leaves and the crispness in the air can mean only one thing: fall has unmistakably encroached on my beloved summer. I truly wish I were a soul who thrived in all seasons, but alas, it is not so. Continue reading
becoming brittany 
