the rose of kiev

Back in August of 2016, I was standing in a garage with a tupperware container full of my paintings, watching a bespectacled woman carefully page through my work. I had been invited there to cut stained glass with a group of grandmother-age ladies, but I had brought my paintings in case the hostess' daughter (an artist in a local gallery collective) happened to visit.   I got lucky - she came by, and her mother insisted she look over what I brought.  And after two years of untrained play with watercolors, I bit my lower lip as she rifled through the container, expressionless.  She paused over two my pieces, murmuring compliments about color and composition, and encouraged me to submit them to an upcoming open show at her gallery.  She thought they had a real shot of being good enough to get in.   "Sophie's Adamanth", the painting he named  I felt giddy on the drive home and called my friend Jess, a professionally-trained artist with a Fine Arts ...

It was a Wednesday night, and Dave and I had just finished eating a late dinner in the living room.  As the end credits scrolled across the television screen, I lay back on the couch. Long orange light slid across the kitchen floor - it was just before sunset, the night of the summer solstice.  Dave stood up, thanked me for making dinner, and went down to the basement to work. The DVD looped back to the menu, so I rose to eject the disc - season one of The Simpsons , the third disc of three.  I reached for the plastic rental cover and popped it back into place with the two others. I walked toward the basement stairs.  "Be back in a minute - don't lock me out!" I called down to Dave.  I heard the soft thunk of something mechanical.  "OK," he called back.  Discs in hand, I slipped into sandals and opened the front door. It was a beautiful night, and a thin summer humidity cooled by the evening wrapped wide ribbons around my ankles, calves and ar...

I wrote this last week before our one-year-old cat, Huck, got sick.  We had to put him to sleep Friday evening around 5:30.  I miss these moments with our little buddy. When I went out to run errands this morning, I almost didn't bring a jacket with me.  On an excessive whim, I snatched a tattered fleecy sweatshirt, the one with the cigarette hole in the elbow (I don't smoke, but I used to spend a lot of time on porchs with smokers).  The moment I stepped outside, I was reminded that it is no longer August - it was cool, lower 60s, a cold breeze and a lingering fog in the trees of the school yard.  I closed the door behind myself and quickly shoved into the sleeves, gathering the cloth around me. Summer is saying goodbye.  I know Ohio well enough to know there are still a few hot days ahead, but I know that Summer's grasp is gone.  And our short-lived beautiful Autumn is coming into her prime. It was a beautiful summer. Oh, for lots of rea...

Thoughts on Marriage Quiet Time Dave and I had a lot going on when we were first married: we were in a church that met at least three nights a week, we each had a full-time college class load, and we both had part time jobs.  But in June of 2010, we both got our degrees.  And in October of 2010, we left that busy church.  Our lives have quieted down a lot, and the quiet has been good for us. Dinner has become an important part of our evening rhythm.  We both get home from work at about the same time, and I put together a simple meal.  There's an unassuming melody to it, a gentle heartbeat.  I ask how many tator tots he wants, and he always says 15.  I knock on the study door when the food's about done, and he gets my silverware and napkin for me.  I hear the scraping legs of unfolding TV trays in the living room as I dish up his plate.  If it's early enough, we watch the news on PBS; if it's later, we watch Jeopardy and Wheel...

This is my younger sister, Natalie. This year she is a junior in high school. And a couple weeks ago she went to her first prom with her brand-new boyfriend. Do you know what prom means? For the male readers who don't, it means shopping. In packs. Gaggles of girls flitting through frothy racks in department stores, fingering the sharp edges and bright sparkles of jewelry specially selected to match the perfect dress. And oh, the opinions. That's what the pack is there for - the opinions. Too big, too shiny, doesn't fit, I'll get a bigger size, puke green is definitely not a flattering color, you're right you're usually a size 4 but I'll go get the size 16 just in case. My mother and I had the privilege of being that gaggle and going shopping with my sister. My soccer-playing softball-shortstop sister. Picture that surly face churning upfield and wearing muddied shin guards; now put her in the "prom" department at Nordstrom's. Let's just say...

Autumn is a woman taking her clothes off.  The sun falling upon the leaves of her garments, her cheeks and fine clothes blush one more time before she starts taking off the beautiful layers of summer.  Summer-green pumpkin vines bulge with warm orange, and corn husks open to reveal checkered orange and rust-red.  She unfolds her arms and apples come spilling out into pie crusts and cider pitchers, herself a cornucopia of bounty.  She laughs in the plenty and dusts her hands on her cornfield apron. She smiles first when someone bites into that tart early apple.  There is always a piece of hay in her hair and a pie on her sill.  Her scent is sweet in the corn maze and the child's trick-or-treat bag; she smells of warmth and change.   But she never visits long, with her rosy orange cheeks and gentle breath.  Because Autumn is a woman taking her clothes off.  And the apple trees are shaken and picked clean, and the pumpkin vines shrivel and turn brown, and every day another tree loses ...

So we made it.  We made it the beach.  And from now until the 12th I pledge to write about every day here, to show you our beautiful little family. Dave and I left at three in the morning to pick up Brandon for the 11-hour drive.  What a good man Dave is - the only break he got was a 90-minute window in Virginia before I quickly wussed out and became too tired to drive.  We passed several cars along the way that we could tell were headed to The Beach, even if we didn't know who they were.  After all, there are at least a dozen other Xenos homechurches each of 30 or more people going the same way to the same place, so we're bound to encounter a few.  Through the dark farms in Ohio and tumbling into the Appalachian hills of West Virginia, getting lost in Virginia clouds and then emerging upon the pines and sandy knolls of North Carolina.  Passing through Wilmington, passing the Food Lion, passing the gift shops, to get to the bridge.  That bridge is our one way onto our beach; it...

Every time I go to West Virginia it seems that I am being adopted by someone else's family. My high school friend Tabatha brought Amy and I down the week after our graduation to spend a week on the holler where her mother's side of the family lives. I talked Tabatha and Amy into piercing my ear for me, which I quickly regretted with loud obscenities when they picked a needle too small. Later that summer, my dad's then-fiance Leah drove us down to her parents' home for a weekend of card games and adventuring in the woods. That was the week Josiah convinced me to bike down their steep gravel driveway; I came limping back to the house with a bloody hip after I used it as a brake. This past weekend I was officially adopted into a happy mess of McCray, Matheny and Mitchell relatives at an annual family reunion that Dave's Granny Rena and her cousins hold in their small birthtown of Nitro, West Virginia. The wide Kanawha (KA-NAW) River cuts through the soft Appalachian fo...

This afternoon I suffered from what was probably the fourth headache I've ever had in my life. Blessed mightily by an excellent immune system, the times when the rogue bodily malfunction slips into my life I am completely lost. The last time I threw up (2 years ago) and was forced to rest my body, I thought Ramen noodles counted as the soup required for sick days. My appalled roommates quickly corrected my naivete. And when my headache came today, Dave had to forcibly tuck me into bed so I could sleep the effects away. There is a window in our bedroom that, somehow, no matter what hour of daylight is always gilded in yellow sunlight. It makes for waking up on Saturday mornings a warm and gentle process, the shadows from the leafless branches painted onto our cream-colored blinds. As I was waking cautiously from my nap, gauging whether the vice had been removed from my temples, my eyes were drawn to the blinds by a flicker of movement. The shadow of a sparrow had alighted on the sha...