Tag: dreams
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How to Win the Day
Last night: chips and salsa, tacos, and sangria with my longest best friends. One declares she’s learning to wait. (A fist pounded on the table to mark the historical moment.) She’s the decision-maker of the team, so we cocked our heads a little bit, squinted, because this whole waiting to make a decision thing will…
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When Life Goes Off-Roading
A baby lost. Singleness prolonged. Families incomplete. I always feel different, changed in some deep way when I hear stories like these about faithful people who have plowed through serious heartbreak. No one expects to lose a newborn baby, one you’ve carried around for nine months, rubbing your belly while whispering prayers of forever. No…
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For When You’re Still Waiting
I want what I want, when I want it, NOW. No, yesterday. As my grandma always sang to me as a child, “There was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad she was…
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Do you know how to count it all joy?
I saw a man fishing at the lake yesterday. He wore black knee-high boots and stood in the water that came about halfway up his boots. I bet the water felt cold, as we’ve barely kicked the frost in Maryland. He just kept standing there in his baggy khakis draped over his boots, holding his…
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Why watching scrappy people crush it will never get old
I showed up late to the podcast game. Last summer, my cousin started talking about this podcast called How I Built This while we straddled dry-rotting green rafts at our family’s lake house in North Carolina, keeping those feet moving to fend off the mole-biting sunfish. (Where are you sweet summer?) So I started listening…
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It takes time
On one end of my street, construction workers are knee-deep in building a multi-million dollar library. On the other end, a multi-million dollar fire station will soon have firefighters sliding down the poles they are staking in the ground. It is a mess. Literally. As I’ve walked by the construction zones on casual strolls…
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You’ve gotta write like there’s no such thing as a broken heart
Yesterday, I taught a writing class. We flipped through dogeared pages of Bird by Bird together on a screened-in back porch that overlooked a wooded lot with trees changing colors on me. We waited for the french press to brew our Starbucks medium roast, then wrapped cold fingers around steaming mugs as the temperature dropped.…
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Traveling back for the strength to come home
They asked me, “What brought you back?” “Just to visit,” I said. “Just to see you.” (Did I need a better reason?) This weekend, I had a few options for reunions: high school, college, or grad school. I nearly vomited at the Facebook invite for a ten-year high school reunion. Somehow reliving those years…
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To the person who broke into my car and tried to steal my new smile
I wrote the draft of this post in a composition notebook that I found from the year 2000 because you stole my laptop and my journals, along with the bible my aunt and uncle gave me for my 18th birthday. I found an old vocabulary quiz in this purple marble notebook with the word…
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If time could talk
On tonight’s agenda: family dinner. My brother’s long-time girlfriend will pick up pizzas from Anthony’s, one large brushchetta and one large pepperoni. He texted in the group family chat, Does this work for everyone?, as if the guy at Anthony’s doesn’t know our name and our order and my womanly status by heart, every…
Ashley Fenker 