Bread, Wine, Salt

Perfume Joy smells like lying in the dark in my bedroom, pretending to be asleep  when my mother came in to check on me after coming home from a glamorous grown-up party, the kind I never go to,  because no one is glamorous anymore. Joy smells like the sound of her charm bracelet jingling  as she took off her fur coat,  and the rustle of garment bags as she put it away in the spare closet. Sometimes the parties were at our house.  My parents would hire a man to tend bar,  and his wife to manage the kitchen for the evening  so they could mingle.  My sister and I put on our best party dresses and carried trays of hors d'oeuvres  through the sea of people, offering up ham biscuits and shrimp puffs  and showing off our best manners.  We were never relegated to watching the party from the top of the stairs.  My mother knew there was no chance we would sleep  and she might as well get fre...

Everything that I've ever written that was even remotely worth reading began with words that were cut from the final project. They were beautiful words that I loved, but they had to go. They weren't necessary to the reader and they slowed everything down. But they were very necessary to me as a writer. They told me things about the story I was writing that I needed to know. Chapter Zero will be an occasional series of first things I've written. If they ever grow into bigger things, these first things will almost certainly pass away. In the meantime, I welcome comments, questions, suggestions and harsh criticism.  Eirikr and I have a once in a lifetime love. Once in several lifetimes, actually. I have loved him in seven lifetimes that I remember and I have lost him in six. Now his sits before me, thinking his name is Jason and that he is a student in my Introduction to Ancient History class. He came by during office hours seeking feedback on his research paper. I am B...

My nephew was visiting. He's an exceptionally bright kid, probably on the spectrum, but highly verbal and outgoing. It's just that he sees everything and lacks a filter. So when we took him to visit a young friend who had build a model of the solar system, I had to warn my nephew not to point out any errors. There were bound to be errors, of course, because no matter how carefully you measure, you can't build a whole solar system out of styrofoam and fishing line. Our young friend had certainly tried his best. This was no mere coat hanger science project. It filled a large room, and in addition to the styrofoam and fishing line, there was a projector that created a horizontal screen of light that showed more stars. Maybe it was a whole galaxy, not just a solar system. There were a lot of things, whatever it was. My nephew was trying to tell me that the projection looked different from above than from below, so I lay down and looked up, and asked him to put a finger throug...

There is no quiet at the beach, because the ocean roars at you from across the dunes, says good morning before you can even see it. I’m not the first person out. I pass a man with a baby strapped to his chest. The baby is watching the ocean. The man walks, eyes front. I wonder if the mom is sleeping in for once, or if he’s always up early, or if the mom is actually another dad instead. Did the baby sleep well last night and wake early? Or did no one sleep well last night and this is a desperate attempt to get someone some sleep. The dogs are almost certainly not allowed on the beach, but there’s no one out to tell the owner to leave as he throws tennis balls into the ocean. The dogs race out into the surf. The bolder, stronger swimmer goes past the crashing waves, while the more timid one is tossed under wave. They race back with their prizes, tails wagging, ready to go again. There are fewer joggers than I expected, but more fishermen. Fathers and sons, brothers, men alo...

I would very much like to move. I would like a fresh start in a fresh place. Someplace closer to the beating heart of a city perhaps. (Much as I like to pretend I’d enjoy living further afield, I know that having to drive a long way just to get to the grocery store that’s not even my favorite grocery store would drive me crazy.) I want to live somewhere new where I have not eaten at all the restaurants or seen all the monuments, where I have not memorized the weather patterns. I would like to know more things about a place than you can learn in a single visit. I would like to try being a new person with new people. This is more lovely in theory than in practice, of course. I would like a really compelling reason to go through my belongings one at a time and decide what is important enough to keep and what should go. I would like to box up everything I don't love and put it out for the charity shop to pick up so that it can be used by someone who would love it. I’m pretty go...

Today’s readings are packed full of things that we as a church would rather not talk about: disobedience, shame, exile, despair, demonic possession and the unforgivable sin. Oof. It’s no wonder that the first commentary I read about these suggested that preachers talk about Jesus expanding the boundaries of family. That’s a nice gentle thing to talk about on a Sunday morning, isn’t it? Jesus sitting with his followers and claiming them as his brothers and sisters. I’ve already written at least one sermon about that idea, and I’m sure I could write another. But I’m not going to do that today. I’m also not going to spend a lot of time on the Fall of Man in our Old Testament reading. If Carol would like to invite me back to preach in June of 2018, when this reading comes up in the lectionary again, that might give me enough time to put together a coherent sermon on snakes and apples, maybe. Our Gospel reading is just a snippet of Mark which we’ll be hearing more of as the summer goes ...

If you're not already a baseball fan, then Caleb Joseph is the reason you should become one. A year ago, Caleb Joseph was stuck in the minor leagues. After four seasons with the AA Bowie Baysox, he was up a level at AAA Norfolk, making almost no money, not as much money as a man with a new wife and hopes for a family would need. He’d planned to give it up, to go find a real job and be a guy who had once played professional baseball but that you’d probably never heard of. Maybe he would tell stories, and maybe he’d be a coach somewhere in his spare time. He didn't want to quit, of course, but four years in AA ball is not how you get to the Major Leagues. I’m sure he thought it was time to grow up and stop dreaming about baseball. It was Caleb Joseph’s wife who convinced him to give it one more shot, one more season of minor league ball, one more season of watching hotshot prospects get called up, of playing with big leaguers when they came to the minor leagues to rehab af...

There was a room in my house that only I knew about. You got there through a half door in my sister’s closet. I haven’t been in that closet in years, but I believe the half door is real. The room itself is impossible, which isn't to say that it’s not real, only that it can’t be. We’re not talking about a bit of a cubby, a utility space where one could stash a journal or a treasure box or even one’s own small self. The secret room was whole room, as big as any of other bedrooms in the house but instead of being crammed with furniture it was empty and it’s only appeal was that is was a room entirely devoid of stuff.  There was no point in putting a wardrobe in there after all. The room itself was already in Narnia. At some point early in my childhood my parents built an addition on their house so that they would have a bigger bedroom for themselves and my sister and I would each have our own bedroom. I remember the addition being built, and I remember sharing a room with my sister...

I haven't written anything worth sharing recently, or cooked anything worth writing about. It's been full speed treading water for a while here. I have a novel I'm supposed to be writing, a writing class I'm not keeping up with, and a letter I should have written months ago that I haven't started.  It's an important letter, and I hope it will be a good and helpful letter, but it will also be a hard letter to write, and a sad one, so I keep putting it off because I am a much better person in theory than I am in practice. But as long as I haven't written that letter I don't feel that I can sit down and write anything else. And so here I am, with something someone else wrote, because maybe you want to read something wonderful. I've read Charlotte's Web to my boys several times now. E.B. White's prose is magical. I could put almost any of his descriptive passages here to show you what I mean, but the rope swing is my favorite. His phrases s...

Kate woke to the winter sun on her face and the sound of the baby chatting away in her crib. No, Kate reminded herself, not baby, almost two years old. With a sigh, Kate pulled herself away from the warm, sleeping body next to her, undisturbed by the sunshine and the not-a-baby. Kate was always grateful when he slept through the night wakings, but  she wished he would take a morning every now and then, maybe a Sunday morning like this one, so she could sleep late, maybe read a book in bed.  Kate put her bare feet on the worn rug, rough under her feet, and slipped on her bathrobe, then padded down the hall to a bedroom crowded with bed and desk and dresser and crib and the over-sized personality of a dark-haired not-a-baby who seemed to fill everything.  “Good morning, my girl.” “Up! Get up! Breakfast!”  That was every morning. Sunday mornings meant a slower start. Kate scattered handfuls of Cheerios, apple slices and chickpeas on the tray of the high chair, ...

The lovely Jodi from Jodifur  has reviewed my novel for The DC Moms, and there's a free copy being given away, so click here to read and enter !

I have a problem, which is that I have a fear of talking about my book because people might think it's incredibly lame that I have written a book.  So for the last couple of days when I've seen people in real life and they ask me what's been going on I'm all, "Oh, you know, the usual . . . " and then we nod at each other like "Yep, the usual, yep."  I don't say "Hey, I wrote a book, and I'm going to get serious about publishing it soon and I'm very excited and nervous and some other things, too." But it's true. I did get serious. I had it professionally edited and then professionally formatted so that it would look nice in people's e-readers and I swallowed hard and I sent it out into the world. And then I told Facebook about it and not one of my friends said "It's incredibly lame that you have written a book." At least none of them said it out loud, to me. What they said to me was that they thought it wa...

I was ten when I learned to ride a bike. That was late. Everyone elese I knew already rode bikes, except for my mother and my sister who had declared it impossible. There seemed to be some hope for me, so my parents bought me a bike, and one afternoon my father drove me and the bike over to the stadium parking lot so I could ride without fear of crashing into trees or cars. The fact that I might crash into the pavement was not a significant concern. I honestly don't remember much about that day, except that we spent most of the afternoon in that parking lot. I don't think I did crash into the ground because I have a significant fear of failure. I hopped off the seat and planted my feet firmly on the ground whenever there was any risk that I might go so fast as to actually lose control. I hate being out of control. I would wobble, wobble, hop off, wobble, hop off. At one point I got some actual momentum going and ended up riding over a ditch which bounced the seat of my bik...

I just finished The Practice of Writing , a 5 week, online writing course run by Alice Bradley of Finslippy .  I first started reading Finslippy when I was beginning doula work, and I ran into the funniest birth story in the history of the world .  I knew then that Alice Bradley was destined to be my very good friend. She didn't know it yet, of course. After five weeks of a writing class she still doesn't know it. But whatever, she'll come around eventually. Despite not yet being my very good friend, Alice Bradley is an excellent writer, a good teacher and a very encouraging critic. If you write anything: a blog, short stories, poetry, annotated shopping lists, then I strongly encourage you to give The Practice of Writing a try. Our last assignment for the course was to produce fifteen writing prompts of our very own.  It was Alice's little nudge to get us out of the nest. I plan on sifting through what I've written for the course and looking for gold nuggets I ...