Just Keep Swimming Family Category
Season of Lilacs: Memoir For My Mother
Posted on May 6, 2019 6 Comments
Down home, where they know you by name and treat you like family, Down home, where a man’s good word and a handshake are all you need. Folks know when you’re fallin’ on hard times you can fall back on Those of us raised up—down home. (Alabama, 1985) Prologue When my grandmother died, it was April, […]
A Parenting Psalm: Wisdom Prayer for My Children
Posted on April 24, 2019 5 Comments
I remember as a young girl my Daddy pointing out the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom comes with age, he said. Well, he finished, it ought to. It occurs to me—I am trying not to worry about it, really—that because of life’s circumstances, there are many “words of wisdom” I have not taught my […]
(Un)Holy Saturday: A Community Lament Psalm
Posted on April 20, 2019 1 Comment
It is Holy Saturday, God, the day good Christians celebrate Jesus’s body lying in the tomb while his soul descended into hell, the Harrowing of Hell, they call it. Holy Saturday is coming home from a funeral. Everybody is exhausted, and the loss is starting to get real. You have to eat~~people have brought food~~but […]
Hissing Ball of Fury: Losing Diana
Posted on September 24, 2014 Leave a Comment
The cat hated everybody. Everybody, that is, except me. And Sarah, of course–but she had owned Sarah for seventeen years, so that was to be expected. I only knew her for five months, and I didn’t really expect her to warm up to me. More than that, I never expected to warm up to her. […]
Recovering from Fundamentalism, Part 1
Posted on January 12, 2014 Leave a Comment
One of my friends is, like me, a recovering fundamentalist Christian. She suggested that I might get to the root of my issues, whether about relationships, teaching, or writing–whatever–by forgiving myself. It took a recovering fundamentalist to recognize that and present it in that way. The closest I ever got thinking about forgiveness was when […]
Elvis and Me
Posted on January 8, 2014 1 Comment
Today, January 8, is Elvis’s birthday. He would have been 79 years old, which seems astonishing to me. So on this day, I will offer some random thoughts about Elvis and me. Because of those various threads that run through one’s life from age to age, stage to stage, place to place, Elvis runs through […]
On the Couch With Bill O’Reilly
Posted on December 28, 2011 Leave a Comment
Last night after our traditional family Christmas drama, daddy referred to something I had mentioned in passing–that I see a therapist. The second he asked about it, I regretted it. Actually, I thought he knew; my mom has known for months, so I assumed they had talked. No. So, he asked me about it. He […]
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