Journal

I have such happy news today: after weeks of work (mostly on my husband’s part), the Bookshop has received a massive update and overhaul! I am so excited to introduce all the changes we’ve made. One request I’ve consistently heard over the five years since I launched my shop was for the introduction of a…

I appropriated Daddy’s old hunting jacket for my barn coat. It still smells like him; every time I put it on it’s like he’s putting his arms around me. Some days, this fills me with a warm, gentle joy; others, it makes me want to pound my fists and rail against death. I don’t want…

I composed this sonnet for my poetry writing class at Oxford last fall. Something about all the yellow leaves swirling outside my window this October morning made me think of it again… Lift, lift up, your molten-maple gladness, trees, Your ambered arms and age-wracked fingers ringed With yellow gold! Cerulean sky, your firstborn sapphire sing!—…

My father died two months ago. Apart from a few stilted sentences on Facebook, I haven’t known how to frame those words in this space. I haven’t known how to frame any words, really. My journal swells with a stream-of-consciousness torrent—explosions of anguish, swirling eddies of joy. I’ve stitched together a ragged story of things…

I’m sorry to have been so silent, friends. For the first three months of this year, it was a silence born of utter extremity. I wanted to write, but there simply wasn’t time. Between the rigors of an intensely challenging class load, and the demands, the exhaustion, the decisions, the red tape and the long…

I cried a lot this Christmas. This Christmas—like this year—has been beautiful in so many ways. But it’s also been hard. Hard as iron, at times. Hard in a way no one can prepare you for. Back in the fall, my little book club re-read an old favorite, Anne’s House of Dreams. I love all…

When I was about nineteen, I went tent camping with my family in the Smoky Mountains. It was summertime, the mountains were a cool, hushed oasis of mystery and shadow, and everyone else had a grand time—but I’m going to go ahead and confess that I could hardly wait to get back to civilization. I…

The other night after dinner, Philip and I took to our bikes for a starlit ride along the beach. The island here has so little light pollution, and as there was no moon, I was obliged to use the flashlight on my iPhone to see—much less navigate—the twisting path between palms and salt cedars that…

Sunday before last, I stood on the airstrip of this little island of ours and watched a single-engine prop plane take off and disappear into the clouds, feeling very much like a heroine in an old black-and-white movie—and suddenly very alone. For Philip was on that plane, a kind pilot friend having offered to spirit…

“The present state of the world, the whole of life, is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I would reply, “Create silence! Bring men to silence. The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. Create silence.” ~Soren Kierkegaard My husband and my Lord, in…

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….