Childhood Christmases I grew up in a two-story house in the Virginia woods with my mom and dad and sister and always a good Christmas. Christmas Eve we’d drive to my dad’s parent’s house where we’d eat and exchange presents with his brother’s family—the Coxes. That was a mixed bag, with neither of my parents […]
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My Tea Set Regrets
This is a superfluous post. If you’re here for an update on our breakdown status, we made it safely back to the RV park our friends are in by using the interim hitch, and we’ll stay here while Tracy rebuilds our good hitch. Meanwhile, I think of tea. It’s not my fault that I have […]
On Grief, Nonattachment, and Beauty
This entry is part of my personal series, called Wish You Were There, that’s unrelated to travel. Actually, here’s even more of a caveat-type intro. I enjoy other personal writing—part therapy, I guess, part creative adventure—but I’ve been posting that stuff less here these days because I have more readers. This piece, though, I enjoyed […]
Wish You Were There Photos
Project Digitize Old Photos has begun! Well, no actual digitizing has happened, but about a month ago I made room in the trailer for this new project; I grabbed a box of pics from my old house in West Virginia; and I bought a portable scanner. That’s as far as I got. Now that we’re […]
Mom’s Sea of Words
This entry is part of my personal series on grief, called Wish You Were There, that’s unrelated to travel. It’s been a long while since I wrote in this series, but Marcus texted me this morning saying that my mom sounded like she’d been cool, and by god she was. Then I looked at my […]
You Would Have Been 29 Today
This entry is part of a deeply personal series, called Wish You Were There, that’s unrelated to travel. Today’s photo essay was created by Shana.
Mom in Decline, with Kindness
This entry is part of a deeply personal series, called Wish You Were There, that’s unrelated to travel. There’s so much I don’t want to remember about the last years of my mom’s life when she had dementia. How, at first, she hated it at the assisted living place. How her memory and functioning declined […]
That Time with the Tacos
This entry is part of my personal series on grief, called Wish You Were There, that’s unrelated to travel. There are a couple of weeks in my past with Kim and Katherine that I’ve wanted to write about but can’t find an angle in. Too many things happened in each week; there are too many […]
It Keeps Happening, for a Reason
Shana and Marcus are regular contributors to GDTRFG; this is the first time I’ve put their writing here in my personal series, Wish You Were There. In truth, this post connects to several themes throughout this blog. It was written by Shana. At this point, you might suspect that I was referring to the rain […]
That Cracker Dog’s Gonna Flop Bot (and other family sayings)
This entry is part of my personal series on grief, called Wish You Were There, that’s unrelated to travel. Turns out those two phrases did not originate with my family; we’re all plagiarizers! It was a character in All Creatures Great and Small who used to say that her dog running around like crazy was […]
