Be a Camellia

Last month, my oldest friend Kathryn said goodbye to her mother. It was a hard goodbye after weeks of hospitals, frustration, and medical shortcomings, and Kathryn and her father will be dealing with the raw scar of pain for a very long time. Andrea Hickman White was an honest to goodness force of nature. She was married for more than fifty years to her high school sweetheart, Ken. She loved her...
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Feeling Like a 900-Year-Old Woman

As a good friend of mine says, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. In my case, that means I went from what I thought was really impressive heartburn (something totally normal for teacher types with too much to do and too little time to do it in) to an inflamed gall bladder. There’s nothing like “gall bladder surgery” to make you feel like a 900-year-old woman. Seriously,...
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Bears With Furniture

One problem with living in a creative family is the amount of stuff we all tend to accumulate. When Mr. Man decided he wanted to play guitar, the Yamaha acoustic cutaway was soon joined by five electrics and Frick’s Squier jazz bass and Martin dreadnought. We have piles of movies and video games, boxes of art supplies, and yarns for both knitting and needlepoint. We’re all readers,...
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Learning to Let Go

Trips to Daddy’s in Highlands have a pattern. The way up is the hated trip on I-75 through Georgia–the Interstate that seems like it’s been under construction since I was a kid. The way back involves an overnight stop in Clemson at my aunt and uncle’s house on Lake Keowee (Aunt Lou’s B&B, we call it), then a loop up and over Greenville, down through Clinton so...
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Something Wicked This Way Comes

One Sunday morning lo, these many years ago, I went to youth group at the church and met up with my friend Scott. We had horrifying news to discuss. Daddy had gone on a date the night before–with Scott’s MOTHER. After sharing mutual teenage ick over the thought of parents dating, one of us hazarded the unthinkable: “What if they GOT MARRIED?!” Well, they did. I inherited...
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