When You Get Sunburned
Hope wakes me every morning and gets me out of bed—firm and insistent as that sunshine. And there’s a lot of sun in my life. Yesterday...
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cassieebrown
- May 11
- 3 min
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...
49 views0 comments
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...
54 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...
80 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...
48 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...
46 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...
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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...
37 views0 comments
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...
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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...
43 views0 comments
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...
35 views0 comments
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...
25 views0 comments
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...
44 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...
26 views0 comments
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