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The Goodness of Goodbye
When is the last time you’ve had to say goodbye to someone? I mean really had to say goodbye, the kind of goodbye that means, “I don’t know when we will see each other or talk to each other again on this earth.” Most likely it was when someone you knew was dying. Think about how incredible that is. Once upon a time, when folks moved a town over....
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Fever
When well, it’s easy to forget how utterly miserable it feels to have a fever. In fact, the moment the fever breaks, already the memory recedes—we may feel exhausted, wiped out, laid low, but also relieved, no longer at war with our own body. Even if we try to remember, can intellectually recall and describe what it is like, the immediate feeling is gone, and so is our most intimate experiential knowledge. It is like trying to describe falling in love....
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Epithalamium
My first wedding took place on November 1st, 2003, All Saints’ Day, exactly two years after my fiancé proposed to me in a Waffle House parking lot, before we’d ever even kissed, and I said yes. I was twenty-one, old enough at least to legally have a glass of champagne at the reception. Where I’m from, twenty-one is a perfectly acceptable age to enter into a marriage. My mother was seventeen when she and my father married, and my father’s mother was only fourteen. Back then, if you were finished with school and ready to work or make a home, it was time to marry and get on with it....
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City Girl
Growing up I took great pride in being a “county girl.” Not “country girl,” but “county girl.” That is, I lived in Bradley County, TN, outside the city of Cleveland, population 40,000 or so. I attended Bradley County High School, rival of Cleveland City High School in all manner of scholastic competitions—sports, academics, and art. Being part of the county made me feel tough, scrappy, something of a tenacious underdog. The city kids were dropped off at school, or drove there in new, canary yellow XTerras. I rode the bus through my junior year, catching it at 6:15 in the morning to arrive at school by eight....
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Family Recipe
Although David and I stopped eating most meat around six months ago, we decided to bake a ham for Easter dinner. Perhaps because, since we were celebrating the holiday alone, we wanted to feel connected to our families through a traditional meal. Or perhaps because all the supermarkets had hams on sale. Or perhaps because ham is delicious, and we felt entitled after half a year’s abstinence. Our new stab at vegetarianism isn’t the only lifestyle choice it is hard to explain to our families. Most phone calls with my mom involve....
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Current Issue
Issue 71
Fiction by Larry Woiwode, interview with Joe Henry, art by Fabian Debora, essay by Barry Moser.
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