Marriage
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more5 Secrets to Make a Marriage Last
On Wednesday, June 16 th, 2010On the fourth day of our honeymoon, he’s ready to get back to work and we come home three days early and he goes back to the barn and I unpack the wedding gifts in an empty kitchen. I cry ugly, shoulders shuddering and tears dripping off the end of my nose, because I just know. I married the wrong man. For the first year after the vows, I am certain of this. He goes to b...
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The Making of A Marriage Pt. 1: Leaving and Cleaving
On Wednesday, June 09 th, 2010That whole December day after he proposes with a ring of gold, we cut wood, lay down trees and push the round trunks straight into the saw and the steely teeth of the blade cuts all the rings, all the lined years, into long planks of lumber and I stare smitten at my finger, shift my hand for the flash, dazzled by a diamond. My father plans on making a forest into a floor. The...
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Intimate Issues: The Making of a Marriage Bed
On Wednesday, May 26 th, 2010When my Grandma told me to marry a man who wasn’t much to look at so there’d be little worry of him wandering, I had nodded ‘cause I loved her. But I confess. I didn’t intend to pay her any mind. I did ask her if she had taken her own advice. She said yes — and my grandfather had slapped the worn knee of his jeans and roared with laughter and I saw it with my own ...
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… when you know the thread count of your life …
On Monday, May 10 th, 2010On Mother’s Day in the afternoon, I strip down our sheets and enfold them into the dark womb of the washing machine. Because on Mother’s Day first thing in the morning, I had heard the clattering of bowls in the kitchen and I’d waited still and when a son brought breakfast to me in bed, I’d laid with the eyes closed and whispered, R...
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moreJUST: Feed a Man What He Always Needs
On Friday, March 26 th, 2010His hands are working hands, grease-grooved and love worn in service. It’s just those hands I am looking for, just like that, and I find what I’m looking for out in the shop, him working on equipment for spring and planting and tilling dirt. I come out to him with a plate of red sweet still warm. To feed him what a man always just needs. Encourage...
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What all of the Universe is Trying to Tell You Today
On Monday, February 01 st, 2010Thirty seven years ago she was thirty seven years old and in a winter snow storm, she felt the uterine wall tighten, hard blast. She leaned against a door frame and held her swollen side and breathed heavy, steady. The time had come for the ninth, to breathe the babe out with the labored prayers. I lay beside him now, the babe that time made a man. The moon out the window leave...
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moreHow to Really Fall in Love All Over Again
On Tuesday, January 19 th, 2010He lays his hand on my bare shoulder. Water drips from the tips of strands tousled and tucked and a rivulet runs down the small of my back. He kisses me dry. “I have no idea what to wear.” I’m paying him no mind, standing before the closet with my towel, mumbling words. Hangers clatter. “This skin you’re wearing is pretty beautiful.” His stubb...
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morewash
On Tuesday, November 24 th, 2009The hour is late and the house dark and I lie on the pillow listening to the spin of the washing machine, day’s last load, the splash of the dishwasher too, after the feast, And his hand, that one that fed the stock today, Shoveled the dung, brought in the eggs, That washed her smeared face after the dinner and the ice cream, it finds my waist under the sheets and his s...
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moreHow to Fall in Love Again….
On Friday, October 09 th, 2009Oh, what a man can do to a woman…. and a woman to man. Read me over here today? (But only if you’re ready for some Song of Solomon….) Photos: Farmer Husband’s working hands…Share your thoughts?…Would you like to sign up for more quiet thoughts via email?…
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moreBrave Affairs
On Thursday, September 10 th, 2009He lies stretched out in the dark and I lay long beside him, listen to him breathe, only sound there is. This is our love story, the one we’ve written with years and skin and the rings. In his sleep, he finds my hand. It’s the only one I’ve known. His only, hands larger than the rest. Hand in mine, that wraps around a waist, draws in close, slumbering s...
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What a Man Can do to a Woman….
On Monday, August 10 th, 2009Sometimes it takes a man to make a woman. That night he took my face in his hands and kissed me too long in the dark, I was seventeen and he was just a boy. No doubting, we were too young. And I wouldn’t recommend it, just saying how it was and how that smile could drop me, plunge of a rollercoaster, and the rush that flooded veins, torching cheeks. He cause...
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moreWhen A Family is Broken
On Friday, July 31 st, 2009When my dad laid his hand on that axed-hewn beam, against the grain of all those decades, I could see the running of his veins where the sap once flowed to the sky. He was leaning over the pile of wood beams and talking of swing beams and post holes and counting the hours the crane had been there and how he could hardly bare to watch when the Mennonite crew h...
