On a recent road trip with my sister and two cousins, we took turns telling old stories about our family, especially our grandmother. If I had to choose just one story to remember her by, this would be it.

Her husband was a man of many callings, including that of a Baptist preacher. Occasionally he would share the pulpit with a visiting pastor, invite him home to supper and even offer to put him up overnight. [Read more…]

Ever since Elvis died in 1977 and his private estate in Memphis, Tenn., got turned into a public shrine, my sister has wanted to go to Graceland.

She wanted me to go, too. She talked about it constantly. When she wasn’t talking about it, she was thinking about it. Sisters can read each other’s minds. Her mind was set on Graceland. My mind was set on avoiding it. [Read more…]

I never wanted my children to have a stepfather. My parents divorced when I was 2, and my mother soon remarried. My stepfather was a good man, but he wasn’t my daddy. I blamed him unreasonably for that.

One day in in third grade, the teacher asked aloud in front of everyone — God and all his angels and 30 pairs of perked-up ears — why my mother’s last name was different from mine.

I rose slowly from my seat and swallowed hard. [Read more…]

Monday afternoon, I pulled into a parking lot, short on time with a very long list of things to do before flying out of town for a speaking engagement.

High on the list was getting my nails done. Usually, I do them myself. With my husband’s nail clippers. But occasionally I feel the need for a slightly more professional look — preferably a profession that doesn’t involve cleaning an oven or changing the oil in my car. [Read more…]

This morning I turned on my computer and squinted, half-asleep, at the date: April 8.

Seriously? How did that happen? I’d have sworn it was still March. And why did the date sound so familiar? Too late for Easter. Too soon for taxes. Then it dawned on me.

Today was my brother’s birthday. [Read more…]

Yes, it was annoying. I kept meaning to do something about it. But I didn’t. And gradually, I got used to it. I didn’t notice it anymore. Except when my husband complained.

“Don’t you hear that?” he’d say. “Doesn’t it bug you?” [Read more…]

Call it self-imposed exile. Or solitary confinement. Or witness protection. Or whatever.

Three days ago, I flew from my home in Las Vegas, to Monterey, Calif., to visit my children and grandchildren.

It had been two months since my last visit, and I was looking forward to it. Two months is a long time to go without seeing people you love, especially little people who change so fast you can blink and the next thing you know they’re shaving. [Read more…]

Sometimes life takes you full circle back to someone you thought you’d never see again.

Long ago, when we were little girls running barefoot around our grandparents’ house, trying to stay out of our mothers’ permed hair, I used to call my cousin “Bad Linda.” Not because she was bad. She was not.

But simply because I was a year older than she, and starved for any kind of status I could garner, needing, I suppose, to lord it over somebody, if only my favorite cousin. [Read more…]

Things are not always what they seem. I know this.

I’ve known it all my life, ever since that cold December night when I was 5, and noticed that the man who came pounding on my grandmother’s door in a tacky red suit with a fake white beard, proclaiming himself to be Santa, bore an odd resemblance to my Uncle Harry. [Read more…]

Some people like to collect stuff. Stamps. Bobblehead dolls. Teacups. Husbands.

My stepfather’s mother, rest her soul, devoted an entire wall of her living room to a vast array of salt and pepper shakers.

She possessed matching sets of most every description; some she bought for herself, others she received as gifts. All were treated like treasures, never to be used, only to be admired.

And dusted. [Read more…]