Two days after Christmas, I trudged downtown in my big snow boots, to say goodbye to Serendipity. The ground was mud and slush. The sky was drizzle and slush. The whole world had the consistency of a bowl of overcooked rice abandoned in the back of the fridge. Everyone I saw was miserable in that way you can only be miserable two days after Christmas on a slushy afternoon. I was the most miserable of all. I had already paid... Read more
Last week, my friend The Lost Girl thought she had found a house. As you may recall, she’d been told that she was second in line for the place if the people ahead of her didn’t want it. Last week, she found out that the people ahead had dropped out of the running. She thought that was a “yes.” She started asking around for totes and boxes to pack up her children’s toys. She called the water department and got... Read more
It was the pigeons that gave me hope. I was going for my walk on a bad day. Epiphany is usually a bad day, thanks to my January doldrums, and this year it felt doubly bad. No car to drive to the museum or the conservatory. No money to sit in the coffee shop people watching over my cold brew. My anxiety was high, so high I couldn’t eat breakfast. But I could still go for a walk. It... Read more
I want to draw your attention to an excellent article on the laicization of Frank Pavone by my friend and former Patheos colleague Henry (formerly Scott) Alt. His blog is worth a follow for all of his content, but I especially want to highlight this post. In this article, Alt goes over the details of a letter, dated May 5, 2017, from Bishop Zurek of the Diocese of Amarillo. Henry lays out the main points of the letter and... Read more
I woke up to find that Pope Emeritus Benedict had passed away, and I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. I kept thinking I ought to feel a certain way. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t even know how I DID feel– a jumble of emotions, none of them with names. So many feelings they began to cancel one another out. The opposite of numbness. At this point in my... Read more
On Thursday night, the toilet didn’t flush. In retrospect, I should have fled town then, but Serendipity is still undriveable, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. After the toilet didn’t flush, we realized that it wasn’t just the toilet: every tap in the house gave nothing but a gurgle. We didn’t have any water. There was about a gallon of cold water in the pitcher in the fridge, so I took my vitamins and... Read more
I got a text on Christmas eve. It was from a homeless lady I know. She wasn’t always homeless. She used to be in a horrible, neglectful nursing home that made everything worse– she’s a bit young to live in a nursing home, but she had a badly broken leg and got shuffled there after she was released from the hospital. I am at a loss to describe how bad this home was. I smelled the stale urine myself... Read more
I saw the most unusual portrayal of Mary and Jesus the other day. The name of the piece is “American Nativity” by Kreg Yingst. I saw it on his social media here and read about it here. This is the painter’s website. If you’ve followed this blog for awhile, you know that I was raised in the Charismatic Renewal and my community had a thing for apparitions. I became terrified of the Virgin Mary because of how she was... Read more
This morning I woke up in my living room, with my face stinging from the cold. Tonight I will be lighting candles. With the severe polar blast, it had been negative five all day yesterday, with the wind chill in the negative double digits. The furnace had done its best, but with the drafty old Victorian windows and the high winds, the upstairs was unbearable overnight. We’d dragged my mattress down to the first floor where it was only... Read more
Yesterday, when it was still raining, before the terrible cold and frost blew over Ohio, I had Serendipity towed to a mechanic. The Lost Girl‘s uncle couldn’t come and fix the car anyway, because they all came down with that terrible influenza strain that was going around, but a friend sent money for a tow. I hoped it would just take a few hours, but they said the car needed a battery as well as an alternator and it was going... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In