the rose of kiev

Friday afternoon I left the law office on my bike with a graduation card in my purse. I was accompanied by a heavy summer thunderstorm. Biking along the river and under bridges gushing runoffs from the streets felt like being on an amusement park water ride. But I had to go no matter what - I had my university graduation rehearsal to attend. All ten thousand of the 2010 graduates were emailed and instructed to gather at French Field House (across the street from the stadium) at 1 p.m. Around 12:30 I locked up my bike and waddled wetly into the open garage door of the indoor track field. I wrung rain water from my french braid as it dripped from the cuffs of my jean capris. A few hundred people had begun to gather by the frail 8-foot-tall markers denoting fields of study. After some confusion with where my fellow journalism majors were (College of Behavioral and Social Sciences) and what color my tassel needed to be (maroon), I spent the next hour swathed in hangover-breath while eavesd...

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...

In the time between living at home and being married now, I lived in a series of ministry houses with other girls in my church - 4 houses total. Several months ago the last of the girls I once lived with in the first on Dayton Avenue vacated the half-double, and its vacancy has made it a prime location for the boys in my present homechurch to move into. Being in that house and bringing in their belongings, I felt as though these boys were moving into my memories; it was a strange feeling, as though a good old painting I had was suddenly being painted over by someone else. As we walked up to the front of the house perched atop the steep lawn, repainted a less-offensive shade of teal than before, memories untouched for many many months came back to life with bright vivacity. We walked around to the back as the moving van door slid open, and I stared up at the back wall of the house. I did not want to go in, didn't want to see the empty spaces filled with boys' things because my m...

there are days when I look at my blog and groan, thinking about the time it would take to sit down and write an entry, because I wouldn't write and post anything I didn't like or put myself into. and when I need an incentive to put something else up...I read the comments tagged onto the end of another long entry of mine, and remember there are people out there reading it and checking to see if I added something else. and the rush from that gets my creative juices going once more, remembering funny stories and thinking of the day's events, wondering if I can make it enjoyable for one of you guys to read. So, I've been assigned the task of cleaning my room. In other words, I pulled out my handy jackhammer and put on my trusty hard hat, just to be safe. I don't think you could understand - my room is a Teenage Junk Landfill. I wouldn't be surprised if I find something living under my dresser, once I finally work up the guts to reach my arm under there and I hope it...