My father’s mother was Italian. She was really old the day I was born and realy old twenty years later on the day she died. My Italian Grandma wore a dark dress every day of her life, a dark knitted shall, and support hose that came up to her knees. Her shoes were sensible black…
I was about twelve years old the day I witnessed her tall thin frame flit past me on her way down from the cabin dressed in a bad bathing suit, beach towel flung over her narrow pail shoulders. She hit the beach running and then came to an abrupt halt, dropped her towel and looked…
A ghost was looking down on us, tortured mouth silently crying out, empty hollow eyes. We gasped and took a good hard look at each other than looked back to the window. “Did you see what I just saw?” “Oh, yeah. What do you think it was?” “It was the ghost, of course.” Crossing the…
My friend Kathy has a brother-in-law who shot an alligator once and took it to a taxidermist. The taxidermist preserved the alligator in a posture that made it look as though it were getting ready to jump up and bite someone. It appeared to be lunging forward, slightly elevated on its front legs with the…
I recently spoke at a woman’s retreat on the subject of contentment: a tough subject for most of us. Our gathering was small, about thirty five women in all. Yet it was exactly right. One by one, we opened closed doors and introduced each other to the person hiding behind them. One by one we…
It was late July or early August and we were all at the lake, hanging out at the old cabin. It was just past sunset – that time of day when everything cools off and those familiar night sounds begin to echo from the surface of still waters. There was always a damp earthiness that…