Two weeks ago I was 13 miles out at sea, at the helm of a 37-foot sloop named It’s About Time (I couldn’t agree more). Under fair skies and in the grip of a fresh breeze, it was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. Even the faint swirl of seasickness felt like…
Today marks yet another important date: it is the 100th birthday of Sheldon Vanauken, author of my favorite book of all time, A Severe Mercy. Having honored dear Davy with a sonnet on her illustrious centennial, I could not bear to let this day pass without acknowledging our great chum Van in like manner (though…
On this day 100 years ago, something happened that would dramatically impact the course of my life: Jean Palmer Davis was born, known more intimately to the world as Davy Vanauken, beloved wife and heroine of Sheldon Vanauken’s A Severe Mercy. I’ve written elsewhere of that book’s place in my heart, and Philip and I…
It’s been a busy summer, what with bookbinding and writing projects, Ivester vacation (from which we’ve just returned) and a recent 15th wedding anniversary adventure on another of our golden barrier isles (which I hope to tell you about soon!). If there’s one thing I actually love about social media, it’s getting to see glimpses…
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby We came home last Sunday from three weeks away to find the yard…
for Rachel, who knows The choristers sang at dawn in Oxfordtown, birdnotes chiming from tower’d nest of stone above the mink-brown Cher. I have never heard them do it but by the heart’s hard listening, that fancy-flight of longing that makes an actuality of the imagined, till the dream is more real than the real….
On November 22 of last year, I lost my voice. I’m not talking laryngitis; I mean my words. They scattered from me like a covey of quail, and I knew, standing there amid the ragged stubble of a waning year, that there was nothing I could do to call them back, nothing but lean into…
I want to begin by saying a warm thank you for the outpouring of excitement and encouragement attendant upon the announcement of my book earlier this week. If it weren’t for all of you, I wouldn’t have had the courage to let it out into the world. Thank you for celebrating this happy milestone with…
Oh my goodness. I am so excited about what I have to share today that I hardly know where to begin. This news has been over five years in the making. And now that it’s finally time to let it out into the world, I’m tripping over my own enthusiasm. It all began in the…
Slipping quietly into this little space on a brisk-but-brilliant almost-spring day to say a warm word of thanks to those of you dear souls (and you know who you are) who have spoken such kind words of late over my long absence from Lanier’s Books. Truthfully, it wasn’t until I received a profoundly gracious email…
I was mad at God. It was the 30th of November, a date by which I’ve traditionally completed all of my Christmas shopping, planned my holiday meals, decked half the halls and basically thrown myself heart and soul into the preparations for the season I love best. It’s not that I’m so organized: it’s just…
Wednesdays are my favorite days, and this is my favorite Wednesday of the year. I absolutely love the anticipation that this day means. Since early this morning I’ve been chopping herbs and pecans, grating orange rind (that lovely little burst of spray that escapes every time the zester perforates the orange is like a tiny…
I’m happy to announce that there are new books in The Shop today! I’ve added some real favorites, including several rare titles by Frances Hodgson Burnett and collectible volumes by Grace Richmond. I’ve also got two titles by Elizabeth Von Arnim, The Enchanted April and a beautiful copy of Elizabeth and Her German Garden. And,…
I. For Philip Cicadas sing at midday, metal-bright Murmur hymning indolence to earth, While painted ladies dart in fevered flight, Knowing of all most poignantly life’s worth. Fond sunlight coaxes salt scent from marrow Of warm-breasted marsh, and drows’d palms breeze-wake With green rapier-rattle. An arrow Pierces yet—Summer to her flight betakes. A silver ribbon…
Well. Hello there. I hardly know where to begin. After forty-plus days of retreat, I feel like my soul has had a thorough airing and scrubbing. Like I’ve been at once standing on a high and lonely mountaintop in a bracing wind and tucked securely in the cleft of a rock, shadowed by an Almighty…
I have always been a five year-old about birthdays. I love them, and I get very excited about celebrating the day that God in His mercy chose to give me life. The most ordinary things seem tinged with magic, and I pray I will never grow out of that. But I am also very awed…
This post has been brewing for a good long time. Ten years, as a matter of fact. What follows is something of a personal retrospective, probably not of the least interest to anyone but me. Truthfully, it’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written—how to confine an important decade to a few paragraphs?—and…
Like a white gull, caught in the cross-purpose of an opposing breeze, I hang, suspended upon grief and this searing joy. Weightless, effortless, aloft on these mercies, I hover ‘twixt heaven and earth, love greater even than that which wrings my heart burgeoning beneath these wings. Such gift, this graceful breath, inkling of the ageless…
The End
The End