Spilling the Tea

Last spring, before retirement, I dashed out the door daily, driving to my windowless work space Once there, I loved reading and writing with seventh grade students, chatting with colleagues during hall change but on the way from my front door to my classroom door Envy rode my stiff shoulders like a green snake curled…

Sitting is the new vice, like smoking. Granny smoked for forty years and then dreamed about it long after her last cig. Imagine if I stopped sitting…I’d definitely dream about leaning back, feet propped up, book open in my lap. Will there be “NO SITTING” sections in restaurants? Aunt Betty, who smoked most her life,…

My firstborn son, Jack, married his high school sweetheart almost five years ago, the summer after the two of them graduated from college. In the months before the wedding, my son told me he’d enrolled the two of us in dance lessons at Arthur Murray Dance Studio. He wanted us to perform a choreographed mother/son…

Write it down write it off off the list to do mail package pack a lunch lunch with friends to do power walk walk the dog dog-ear page to do buy iron iron dress dress it up to do call doctor doctor plants plant a tree to do book the trip read the book time…

My husband and I returned last week from a 10-day beach vacation. We drove my car, Cozy. It was her first trip to the beach. I argued that we should take my husband’s vehicle. It was larger, more room for all our luggage. It was more experienced, having already taken a beach trip the summer…

Her name was Rennie. I called her Gran, my grandmother, my father’s mother,my best friend.She wore red lipstick and painted her nails. She loved Jesus, and diamonds,and my grandfather, and her two sons…and me.Every night, she whispered her prayers.She did not go to college, but she visited me at mine;she read everything all the time. She taught…