Sometimes it’s hard to find a place to write. For me, it is. Inside the house, I’m distracted by bills to be paid, papers to be filed and laundry to be done. Read more
I think about myself a lot, probably much more than I should. But, believe me, becoming an 83-year-old woman involves a massive amount of changes in one’s body and also in one’s thought processes.
It’s strange to me that I have grandchildren who never knew my mother, especially knowing how much she would have loved them.
One of Mama’s constraint refrains was, “None of y’uns realize how much I do for this family. When I’m gone, y’all will all realize it.”
From your childhood, do you remember the story, “The Princess and the Pea,” by Hans Christian Andersen?
One of my most memorable, enjoyable weekends occurred at least 10 years ago in the sleepy, time-frozen town of Selmer in west Tennessee.
Forty-three years ago, I loaded up my Plymouth and moved from the mountains of North Carolina to the coast of South Carolina.
Something nudged me the other day and sent me to a closet where high on a shelf, tucked back in a corner, was a collection of Mama’s gatherings.
Not that it should have mattered. But I’m Southern so it did. It mattered a lot.
It was my junior year in college before I had the unfortunate experience of meeting, for the first time, a man who did not keep his word.
I can hear what you are saying to yourself — “There she goes talking about recliners again. The woman is clearly obsessed.”
You don’t forget a man like Dr. Calvin Hanrahan. At least I can’t. I wonder, from time to time, if he remembers me.
If you drive past my house early in the morning — about 7:30 a.m. that is — and again at 6 p.m. or a little later, a strange sight will grab your attention.
Since I will turn 84 when my birthday arrives in November, I feel it is past time to put my affairs in order.
Tink is like a child with the mail. He can’t wait to get it. Since there’s always a chance that there’s something in there that is going to ruin my day, I don’t mind waiting. At. All.
Yesterday, as I was half dozing, and half listening to TV during the wee hours of the morning, of course the channel playing was the ID show — true stories of murder and mayhem.
Many years ago, I was visiting an elderly woman in a nursing home. I did not know her well but I knew she was lonely so I’d try to stop in from time to time.
Yesterday, as I was half dozing, and half listening to TV during the wee hours of the morning, of course the channel playing was the ID show — true stories of murder and mayhem.
Do you want to know what I have been purchasing lately? Are you curious about whatever I have been looking up online?
To put it in the words of my country kin: In 19 and 35, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that created the Rural Electrification Administration.
Some of my friends call me a pessimist. I tend to see the glass half empty, and it is definitely not lemonade.
When I was a child of five or six, I loved my little record player but other than children’s storytelling albums, I owned only two albums, both gospel. Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash from The Holy Land.
The frigid weather we have been experiencing the last couple of days has literally —well, almost — brought me to my knees.
While playing around on the computer the other night, I happened upon a website entitled “Habits That Make You Age Faster.”
When the nubile Britney Spears sang “Oops, I did it again,” I’m sure she was singing about love, romance or something similar.
In its way, 2018 has been a very hard year as loved ones left us behind to face life on this earth without them.
I kicked off December with a whimper instead of a bang.
You’ve heard me whine a few times about no longer being able to dance. I still regret that I never learned how to do a proper line dance to a country swing song, and I was always out of sync when I tried to keep up with other dancers doing the Electric Slide.
I hate rude awakenings. I really do. And the older I get, the more rude these awakenings can be.
To put it in the words of my country kin: In 19 and 35, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that created the Rural Electrification Administration.
When I arrived to begin first grade, I had already formed an independent nature that was far older than my actual years.
I have been placing the obituaries for our local newspaper for more than 20 years. And during that time, I have been personalizing these obituaries with a small comment under the name of the deceased, a comment expressing the personality or the passions that drove each individual.
A letter came the other day. Just like an old-fashioned epistle from the past, a time when people sat down, took pen in hand, used stationery, put it in an envelope and send it through the mail.
For almost three years of my life, my parents and I lived 10 miles out of town in beautiful countryside located in the Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina.
In the past year, a friend of ours has chastised both Tink and me for how much we work and the spare attention we pay to her.
It’s incredible. Exactly three weeks ago in the early hours of the morning, I was doing the exact thing I was doing this morning — listening to Jim Cantore and Stephanie Abrams warn coastal residents about a hurricane that could reach the coast as a Cat 4 storm with winds exceeding 140 mph.
She just came to mind, tripping through the years that lay between now and the time we buried her so long ago.
Have you noticed all those pretty tops women are wearing now — the ones with the cutouts over the shoulders?
Yesterday, the UPS man left a box on my front porch — the result of my latest online Amazon shopping.
It was back in the summer, when the sun hung high and hot in the sky and the droplets of humidity fell like unwanted drops of rain, that one of my precious friends called.
The other day, Tink forwarded a story link to me. In an effort to know all things Southern and to love better this different life he has chosen, he often checks things online then forwards interesting pieces.
As I write this, it’s 5:30 a.m.and I’m coming off another night when sleep played hide-and-seek with me and, naturally, being discovered when it was almost time to get up.
Several years ago, a soldier serving in Afghanistan, wrote me a fan letter. I believe, though I am not certain, that his admiration came from having read my book “My Life In the Pits.”
When the Rev. Billy Graham passed away, there were wonderful tributes that poured forth from people who knew him or had been inspired by his life and preaching.
Yesterday after a hard day’s work, my son Jeff and I sat in a specially marked parking spot outside the Olive Garden restaurant, waiting patiently for our orders of eggplant parmigiana to arrive.
I had to laugh at my son Jeff yesterday when we were having dinner at a Chinese restaurant.
The other day I was at Mama’s house, digging through kitchen cabinets trying to find a cast iron skillet that had once been there, when I stumbled across a large blue glass jar filled with various utensils that Mama had long used.
There was a woman and her husband I loved most of my life. Many people loved them because they were merry, kind and loving to all.
The realization that I spend a lot of time thinking came to me the other day as I was watching one of my favorite soap operas.
Tink and I sat in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, one of the South’s grand hotels. It was Christmas Day and for three hours, we sat on chairs covered in rich brocade and did what seems to have become something of the past — people watching.
I suppose you think I watch a lot of TV since I often refer to it, and you would be correct.
Commented