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It layered itself like a fuzzy film along baseboards I didn’t often clean. It gathered on books I hadn’t opened in years. Dust marked what I liked to forget. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,”…
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On What We Choose To Keep
Something struck me as I moved to a new home with the new year. Entering a new year, like moving to a new home, often inspires me to evaluate what does and does not go with me. I think of…
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Anything But Gone: On An Advent with Grief
“Who was it?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if I ever knew.” A ceramic Christmas tree sat on my bookshelf. I’d just switched it on, and its multi-colored lights glowed. That little tree had been…
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In the Wake of Pain and the Gold of Care
“How’s your back doing?” my father would ask with a hope-you’re-okay smile from across the dinner table. He struggled to remember many things during the last years of his life, but he remembered that my back was hurting. Perhaps he…
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Claiming a Fast in Pandemic Time: On How We Carry What We Miss
Before the pandemic, the scent of warm, yeasty bread would have filled the chapel. Someone from our school’s café would have walked down in the hour or so before the service to leave a fresh-baked loaf wrapped in a white…
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On the Changing of Seasons
Lately, I’ve been fighting it. Pandemic life has meant so much change already. I’m feeing less and less desire to adapt. I’m feeling strongly protective of things I wouldn’t have expected to hold onto so tightly. As summer passes and…
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Callie J. Smith 