The blueprints tell me the once new house would never be as it was in 1964. The thin white lines drafted on blueprint are no longer virginal. The floors have been released of their coverings and footprints are disintegrated into the now thin air. The furniture has been relocated out of the house to new rooms and inhabitants are sitting [...]
Here I am sitting in the back room of my modest 1800 square foot (that includes the screened-in porch) home with my two beagles, “beagle bookends,” I affectionately call them. I notice how quiet the air is, cool with some dryness autumn evolves, seeping through the ambience of my otherwise cozy and comfy ranch house. I find the stillness of [...]
What is home? Is home necessarily a physical place? Is home a state of being? Does it have emotions? Is it linear or does it witness change? Does home move like a river, characterized by its ebb and flow? Is it ever elusive? When we think of the answer to a commonly asked question, “So, where’s home?” we automatically spout [...]
As the hours of daylight slowly lessen and the heat of sun directly overhead shifts to a dim lower angle, I acknowledge the evolving seasons as summer evolves into fall. As a schoolkid on summer vacation, time was my companion and I used it to live in those moments. My summer memories on Carlisle were made outdoors where I had [...]
I heard the call. It wasn’t a whisper or a delicate voice or loud words urging me to transcribe thoughts to paper where I hoped to see ideas born into stories. The call went off like an alarm, telling me it was time to awaken my spirit. I received my calling when I was fifteen, accompanied by a pink hardcover [...]
My tree attraction wasn’t for just any tree. It was a particular birch tree I had grown to know in my early years – developing a kinship with its youth – planted on the same plot as I. Its delicate arms played in uncomplicated innocence, inviting me to circle around it. The poet Robert Frost wrote, “Birches” where, “I like [...]
When the above pictured house was built (1965) there was just enough foliage planted to round out the squareness in corners and soften and fill an otherwise stark landscape. I was only 3 then, my brother, Tim, 6. I wondered if that was Tim standing in the den window just to the left of the garage. It does look like [...]
It's all in the books. I've been at an impasse on my memoir. After receiving an editor's comments, of which I agree, I'm dazed to think how to go about incorporating her suggestions. "More about the birch tree." Yep, I know I've got unused "thematic potential" here, as she says. I appeared to have dropped my family members! Since they [...]
I've been working on my memoir for 10 years. As you learn just how long it has taken me to write it, I can feel your breathy sigh and see your inquisitive brow asking, "So what's taking you so long?" I read my first draft once and then I thought of my current draft and the two are not the [...]
From Under the Birch Tree As I lugged my stuffed granny cart home I stopped a few times to watch a basketball game, and then a baseball game in the field across the street, continuing on with people-watching who are carrying on with their business. I stopped time to be in the moment and lie down on the cool stiff [...]