“Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands And take it when it runs by.” Carl Sandburg
Tag: memories
Late Bloomer
I have always been a late bloomer. There’s that. DIARY WITH A GOLDEN KEY My first memories of writing and of wanting to be a writer go back to the year 1969 when I was seven years old. I had a pink and white diary with a tiny gold key. I remember sitting on the …
Girl in the Snapshot
Looking at old photographs is not something I do much. I live here, after all, in the present tense. Last week, however, I got a jolt. A friend sent me a few old photographs. I wasn’t expecting them. In fact, I didn’t even know these pictures existed until the moment they popped up in a …
Origin Story
She came up out of the mud where the Mississippi River washes the continent’s silt into the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi Sound was her place of birth, her embryo, her mama’s womb. She knew the familiar cadence of languages mixed as in a boiling pot. There was the French providing spice, the savory meats …
Chasing Squirrels
Sometimes I think writing this historical book is a trick I am playing on myself, a sleight of hand that isn’t working. It’s a distraction from what I am really supposed to be writing—something close and personal and oh so painful, a raw story that reaches to the very bone of my existence. In …
AirB&B
Recently, I learned an astonishing thing. My grandmother’s house where I spent my childhood summers has been made into an AirB&B. Who’d a thunk it! Helen’s house is a simple yellow brick ranch home. To the passer by it is nothing special. The house is a small three-bedroom, two bath that sits atop a …
Rubber Band
The smell of dust, body odor and overly sweet air freshener permeated the air within the stuffy cab. Cabs always made her want to bathe after even a short ride. The driver watched the road. He didn’t speak. His disinterest in the passenger precluded him from noticing her profound sadness that brought her close but …
Everyone Has a Drug
Everybody has their drug whether it’s meth, alcohol, or Jesus. We find a salve that works and bathe in it to varying degrees. For some it’s music. Me, I like words. I swim in the cadence, the meaning, the origin of sounds and letter combinations on the page. I love the varied nuances of words …
Ship Island
When I was a child I spent a great deal of time at the beach. We would sail in my grandfather’s boat, the “Dixie Flyer” or my parent’s boat, the “La Moette,” to the islands off the Mississippi coast. Ship Island was where we would go most often. When I need a place to go, …
Regina M. Allen 