AUTHOR
Autumn makes me think of my grandmother’s pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies. She’d cover them in orange buttercream frosting and then decorate the tops with Jack-o’-lantern faces using a rich cocoa icing. I loved those cookies. My grandmother sold them for 35 cents apiece at the local pumpkin festival, and they sold out every year. My grandmother... Continue Reading →
All winter I watched a neighbor’s deck lights from my back window as they glowed against the grey and cold. The string of lights stretched between tree branches above the wooden deck. Morning and evening, I watched those lights create a small space of warmth against the dark woods beyond. I suppose I needed that... Continue Reading →
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,” the clergy would recite on Ash Wednesday in the church of my childhood. I remember... Continue Reading →
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 myself as relentlessly practical about that. Anything not used in the last year becomes fair... Continue Reading →
“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 part of Christmastime as far back into my childhood as I could remember. It wasn’t... Continue Reading →
“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 worried, knowing at his age how pain can accumulate and weigh us down. I felt... Continue Reading →
Callie J. Smith 