My Personal Creative Nonfiction
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Memories Like Shooting Stars
A few days ago, I heard from my old friend, Jake. We last talked when we were high schoolers, probably in 1977, in the school cafeteria. We were part of a lunch bunch then, known among our classmates as The Family. Now, after all these years, Jake contacted me online. That made me smile. Texting with Continue reading
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To What Extent Can I Control My Health?
I closed my eyes and imagined myself at the edge of a glistening brook. A bare breeze rustled the leaves on the trees surrounding me as water gurgled gently over smooth stones. The sky’s cloudless blue cast a pastel peace over the scene. Here in this imaginary place, I felt my face, my shoulders, my Continue reading
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Aunt Dinny’s Hair
When Aunt Dinny stood with her bun undone, her wavy auburn hair hung down to her ankles. As a child, I once watched as she sat at the vanity in her bedroom dividing the long tresses into segments and brushing each one vigorously—her bedtime ritual. Between segments, she took dainty bites of a cucumber finger Continue reading
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Kitchen Table Talk
Aunt Dinny sat at Mother’s kitchen table snapping green beans for our supper. I sat across from her, shucking ears of sweet corn to be steamed, cut from the cob, and frozen. Mother had bought the fresh produce from our neighbor, who had a vegetable garden in his backyard. Looking down at the beans as Continue reading
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My Parents’ Hearts: Fragments from a Maybe Memoir
Grandma Swayne said that when she made my mother, she started with an oblong stone. She found it at the edge of Sideling Hill Creek by Little Orleans—the area of Western Maryland where my grandfather was born. She took that stone, smoothed by the creek’s ambling waters, and around it wove the flesh of the Continue reading
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My Hillbilly Parents: Vignettes from a Someday (Maybe) Memoir
I didn’t know it when I was a child, but my father was what some people might call a hillbilly. Daddy was one of the many Wilsons from Cameron, West Virginia, south of Wheeling. One of the few of them who left their birthplace, he escaped the poverty and isolation of his mountain home to Continue reading
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