by Carole Duff | Jul 19, 2011 | Dogs & Other Creatures, Family |
When I was ten, Beauty died. “It’s time,” my parents told us three girls. Mother shuttled my younger sister Leslie and my older sister Jane into the old purple Studebaker and drove off leaving my father and me to take care of Jane’s first dog. Looking like a...
by Carole Duff | Jul 13, 2011 | Family |
Whenever my Mother’s sister walked into the kitchen with cooking on her mind, we headed for the hills: Daddy to work, Mother to the back-bedroom for a long bath, and we girls to the great outdoors but, like curious puppies, staying close enough to listen and sniff....
by Carole Duff | Jul 1, 2011 | Family |
Every work day, my husband comes home, changes out of suit into sweats, and either does his weight workout in the basement or dons his reading glasses and sits down to play chess. On the dining room table off to his right, Keith places a tattered book, its cover...
by Carole Duff | Jun 23, 2011 | Faith, Family, Writing and Reading |
On the 10th anniversary of Gretchen’s suicide, I am reading Kay Redfield Jamison’s book Night Falls Fast. I admit that my quest for knowledge is somewhat of an equivocation. Although I seek understanding of my stepdaughter’s struggle and its impact on her...
by Carole Duff | Jun 21, 2011 | Family, Nature |
Today in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun rises high in the sky then stands still according to the Latin derivation of solstice. But it is overcast here, so I revert to memory. I see my father presiding at the head of the table, gazing out the dining room window...
by Carole Duff | Jun 19, 2011 | Family |
When we were young, my sisters and I always made Daddy breakfast in bed on Father’s Day. At sunrise, we would slip out the back bedroom window – as if my parents didn’t know – and pick field strawberries for Daddy’s cereal and wild roses to line his...