Browsing Tag: love

Flat Tire

Tires, Weddings, and the Vortex

The Semmens wedding was the perfect excuse to celebrate surviving this hellscape of a year, and I was more than ready. John Semmens, the groom and now grown-up that I’d started babysitting when I was fifteen years old, was getting married. Although the Semmens had moved from south Georgia years before, our families had remained […]

Smoking

Cigarette

I’ve always been a goody-two-shoes, a square, maybe even a prude. I suppose I am too afraid not to be. Growing up at home, Daddy didn’t put up with much. I knew exactly how I was expected to behave.  Until I was about sixteen years old, I was intimidated, maybe even a little afraid of […]

The Wedding: Part Two

My last post was in June of last year.  Thanks to quarantine, I’ve found the space to write again.   This post is part two of what is a three-part series about the BIG FUN we had at my cousin’s wedding in Birmingham, Alabama last summer.  Check back next week for part three. If I’m going […]

The Wedding: Part One

This post is part one of what is a three-part series about the BIG fun we had at my cousin’s wedding in Birmingham, Alabama.  Family weddings don’t get any better than this one, y’all. We received the Save the Date for my cousin’s wedding in February, so it wasn’t like I had no idea I […]

If You Leave

The back-to-school honeymoon we enjoyed in those fresh-faced few weeks of summer is clearly over.   We are swimming in the deep-end now. We are in full-on homework agony. The scheduling squeezes of after-school clubs are putting a vice-grip squeeze on us now.  The once sparkly-new, back-to-school tennis shoes have turned into worn-down stinkers that fill […]

Love

After Ginny and I were born, Daddy gave himself completely over to loving us, “his girls.”  Daddy is a tough disciplinarian for sure, but we were never too old to be close. Even still, we sit close on the couch, his hand on the back of our heads.  We hug each other hello and goodbye. […]

Colin

Birthday Boy

Just like nearly every other woman I know, tonight after I got home from my full-time job, I started my second full-time job. On this particular evening, in addition to the typical routine: supper prep, supper clean-up, laundry, and homework assistance, I also peeled 8 pounds of russet baking potatoes. Loaded baked potato casserole is […]

Magic

Magic

Every now and then when Ginny and I still lived at home, Mama got a wild hair to clean out the tin house behind Nanny and Pops’ house.  We didn’t have an attic, so we stored all the flotsam and jetsam of our lives in the tin house. At any given time the tin house […]

Tradition

When I was a little girl, Mama cleaned house by first opening all the windows to “air things out and let the sunshine in.” Then, she put a Broadway soundtrack on the record player. I was of the age that chores were fun and helping Mama made me feel accomplished.  She taught me how to […]

Funeral

Storm Series, Part Four: Druids

Things were getting better.  The initial shock was wearing off, and folks were busy with clean up, insurance, estimates, adjusters, livestock, crop evaluations.  There was still no power, but we were all making do. It’s amazing how clean you can get with a bottle of water and a washcloth. Out at Mama and Daddy’s the […]