The year she died, I pressed my knees and hands heavy into the earth. Pulling and planting, I’d work my body until sweat rolled easily, salty streams pooling on the earth below. Tilling, toiling and pulling at the earth, I’d wipe away tears and falling...
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The first essay I wrote for a publication assigned a character limit of 1,400, equating to about 300 words - a little under a page. 300 words seem doable until I sit down and attempt to commit 300 words to paper. Every single time I...
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Have you noticed the candy corn is already stacked high and imploring us all to, “stock up now!”? Just the other day I came very close to acquiescing. In any other year I would have casually tucked the hardly healthy amongst the “Harvested Locally!”. In...
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Awkward and clunky had no room to rear their ugly heads as I followed the arrows up and down the aisles of the grocery store. The other shoppers and I had done this a million times before, but on this day there was a buzz...
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Chances are you have at least two and the thought of either sends you right back to the very moment it happened. Chances are that by simply contemplating either, your eyes slowly close and you breathe deep in anticipation of what is coming. Your mind...
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Sugar slid from the bag with a swoosh, sending puffs of smoke as it filled the bucket. “Halfway,” he said, “halfway is all we need.” Water slopped and sloshed filling the remaining space as he looked around for something to stir the grainy contents. A...
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We would sit, my grandmother and I, for hours. She would tuck my brave one in her chest, holding him so tightly, I was sure it was her heartbeat that lulled him to sleep. And I, I would sit with my legs tucked under me,...
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Heaven offered a protective blanket as my brave one set off to that distant place where his soul is settled. He sets off not knowing my gaze does not veer until he disappears from sight and even then it lingers for a few minutes longer...
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The singsong nursery rhymes I learned when I was a little one are the very ones I taught my babies sitting on the kitchen floor, back up against the cabinets, when they would crawl into my lap and flop their heads on my heart. My...
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The twinkling lights that traced roof tops and defined the trees splayed across yards have long been dimmed and replaced with wispy curls of smoke floating from chimneys. Mother Nature has folded into herself and is not fooled by the chance day that may prove...
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