I have always considered myself as someone who’s somewhat homegrown: I am a backyard garden tomato, with deep roots in good soil and Farmer’s Market pride
Snapshots [beach]
It is nearing sunset on the Gulf. The wind is picking up, and the families who have slathered their babies in sunscreen and shaded themselves with umbrellas and soaked in salt water all day have almost all gone home.
Thirty-Five Years and Counting [street stall]
Vibrant orange and red tomatoes, grown in Soddy Daisy, Tennessee, overflow Tommy Smith’s baskets. South Carolina Peaches, big and round as any I’ve ever seen, sit heavily on the truck’s top rack.
Nourishment [dinner table]
After a day of motherly foibles and toddler chaos, the dinner table brings loose order. It slows the pace, offers nourishment of all kinds, and communicates, in tiny sequence, the important things.
Milk, Cuddle, Dance [bedroom]
The whole world should wake up dancing. Before coffee. Before showers. Before diaper changes. Before anything.
An Airport, Not a Destination [church]
The hope was that the Daniels could engender a church that served as a means of getting people where they wanted to be in life – a spiritual airport rather than faith’s destination.
Wanting [window: Atlanta]
I imagine the sound of cellos enveloping the room. An alluring little blue ring box, tied with a white satin bow, sits, elevated, on a display case.
In the Woods [freestyle: cabin]
Five small rooms compose the cabin’s 900 square feet, a quaint but rustic getaway. It sits in a clearing at the top of a field among a thicket of pines.
My Toddler Tis of Thee [independence]
Like everything else in life, I planned to pull myself up by the bootstraps and figure motherhood out by instinct. And I didn’t want to hear another word about it.
Wholesale [market]
The aisles of Costco are full of anything and everything anyone could want. A small nation – or maybe two – could live here, quite happily, for decades.
