Flannery O’Connor once wrote an essay about the rather strange experience of being a Catholic author in the Protestant South. This was back in the 1950s, when Catholics were regarded as very odd ducks indeed.All these years later, being a Catholic writer in the South, specifically Georgia, remains definitely weird. I discovered this when my first [...]
“Don't knock me over!” These are her words, delivered with laughter, when she sees me walking into the living room of her little condo, and heading toward her for a hug. Her hair is smooth, her lipstick carefully applied, and she wears a ceramic rose pinned on her white sweater. Nearby is her walker, a device [...]
It is so easy to criticize priests. This one delivers dull sermons. That one is always asking for money.. The other one sings off-key. And of course many lay people think they know the perfect cure for whatever ails any particular priest. “Oh, if the Church would just let them get married,” they say, “everything would [...]
He is grimacing with effort as he croons forcefully into the microphone. He is wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt along with sandals. He holds the notes a bit too long and he is sadly off-key. And you might wonder: Why is she attending this rock concert if everything is wrong? Answer: This is Sunday Mass [...]
This is not how I planned to spend my summer. I wanted to sit by the pool and get a break from writing. After all, I told myself, it’s time to relax: You’ve written five books in nine years! But it doesn’t look like I will get to the pool very much this summer. So far, [...]
“I didn’t know you had a lawn service,” I say to my sister. We are sitting at the breakfast table in her home in Oklahoma City with the unmistakable roar of a mower in the background. “It’s the neighbors,” she replies. Turns out her neighbors come over and mow and weed whack without being asked. Normally [...]
I rarely travel overseas and when I do, I fret over too many things. What if the flight is cancelled, what if the weather turns awful, and the biggest one of all: What if the invisible beings that keep the plane up in the sky decide to take a coffee break, and we end up in [...]
On Wednesday night, my husband and I will be boarding a plane to England. We will spend a few days in a lovely little village where his work will be shown in a Tolkien art show. I know I’m going to enjoy seeing the numerous friends we met a year ago in the same spot, as [...]
We are having supper, but the boy is distracted. Every so often, he glances at his cell phone and his fingers become busy. He is text-messaging his girlfriend back home. The boy is our nephew, 13, and the texting is something unfamiliar to my husband and me, because we are Neanderthals in such matters. We do [...]
When it comes to in-law jokes, there is no shortage. People roll their eyes and say “My in-laws….” And the audience is primed to snicker. But every so often, you find someone who really seems to be blood rather than just a person married to a family member-- and then all the jokes fall flat. In [...]
