When Your Heart Beats.
Hospital waiting rooms feel like thinly-veiled restlessness. To know them is to resent them—the breath of anxious love hangs in the air...
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cassieebrown
- Apr 13
- 5 min
When You Can't Breathe.
Today is my sister’s birthday. She would be thirty-nine today, if she hadn’t left this world as teenager who still watched Disney movies...
46 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Feb 23
- 4 min
When It Gets Personal.
I got my haircut today at my barbershop. I sat in the chair a regular, knowing which barber coaches pee-wee league football and who likes...
70 views1 comment
cassieebrown
- Dec 10, 2022
- 5 min
When You Can’t Fix It.
Yesterday I returned from a professional conference where I was one of a few dozen people in my field working in my area, at my level, in...
37 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Nov 15, 2022
- 4 min
When You Take Offense.
Several inches of snow came overnight. It’s now above freezing. This morning, I listen as it melts off of our pines and sugar maple and...
45 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Nov 13, 2022
- 4 min
When You Scrape Your Windshield.
There was frost on my windshield this morning when I left my house for church. It was not the hard and wicked frost of winter. It was...
41 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Jul 24, 2022
- 4 min
When You Follow the Recipe.
My great-grandmother, Blanche, made a dessert salad for church picnics and holidays that was canned fruit, whipped cream, and love. She...
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cassieebrown
- May 29, 2022
- 2 min
When you can only speculate.
My life has been made of speculative fiction for quite a while. This year has been a pile of good books and bad health. I have enjoyed...
49 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Feb 24, 2022
- 4 min
When You Look Beyond.
My mother loves to decorate with things she describes as “primitive.” Rough wood. Cast iron. Antique farm equipment gone to rust. All...
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cassieebrown
- Feb 6, 2022
- 4 min
When You Don't Know What Else to Say.
My uncle died yesterday of an illness no one bothered to investigate in a nursing home in the middle of nowhere. He had been placed on...
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cassieebrown
- Feb 3, 2022
- 4 min
When He Sees His Shadow.
Yesterday was Groundhog Day, and the beginning of February often brings fearful storms to the places where the prairies kiss the Ozarks....
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cassieebrown
- Dec 18, 2021
- 3 min
When You Decide to Walk
When I walked to the post office, it was chilly, overcast, and gusty, but quiet enough that I could hear the wind whipping the American...
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cassieebrown
- Dec 9, 2021
- 5 min
When You Leave No Trace
On Saturday, I stood beside my best friend and watched his tall three-year-old jump around on playground equipment with a fearlessness I...
27 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Nov 26, 2021
- 4 min
When You Stop Repeating Yourself.
Today I put black and white ornaments on a small, artificial tree with my mother. We twisted paperclips into ornament hangers and hung up...
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cassieebrown
- Nov 18, 2021
- 4 min
When You Bite Your Tongue.
I sit in the coffee shop in Real Town, having just finished a raspberry scone with a white chocolate glaze that would be the envy of any...
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cassieebrown
- Nov 11, 2021
- 3 min
When You Leave Your Mark.
The days are clear, and the leaves are turning autumn bright. They turn gold, then scarlet day by day. They are vividly red for a moment,...
32 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Oct 16, 2021
- 4 min
When You Do Not Keep Pace With Your Companions.
Around here, I dance on a blade’s edge—leftist brain with a farmgirl heart. White-collar job with blue-collar sensibilities. I always...
43 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Oct 11, 2021
- 4 min
When You Lose Your Voice.
“Military wife, huh?” my new coworker asked me with a grin. She had just learned that I spent my adult life in California, Colorado,...
42 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Oct 9, 2021
- 3 min
When Forgetting Means Re-learning.
I realized that I don't hug my mother very much. COVID and living alone have made my arms heavy, hesitant, and empty. I don't know how to...
25 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Oct 8, 2021
- 4 min
When strangers aren't strangers.
Yesterday Mom and I stopped at a hometown diner in Smalltown on our way back from the Smalltown Cemetery, after decorating the grave of...
48 views0 comments
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