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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,” the clergy would recite on Ash Wednesday in the church of my childhood. I remember... 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 →
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 towel on the table. We’d have smelled it through all the prayers, music, and spoken... Continue Reading →
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 days shorten, I find myself feeling inordinate amounts of grief about small things like the... Continue Reading →
I’ve never worked in kintsugi gold, but I’ve begun enjoying the other kinds of repairs that I do manage to do. Repairs feel like a form of care for the things that go with me through my days. On the bookshelf, a Joy of Cooking cookbook I inherited from my grandmother has its cracked spine reinforced with... Continue Reading →
Does the vividness of memory ever surprise you? It does me. I remember a day as a student when I joined some classmates in waving scarves of every color as we danced barefoot down the grey, marble-floored hallways of our seminary. A drummer walked with us, and a group of people followed. I think it... Continue Reading →
Callie J. Smith 