Monthly Archives: May 2025

A Week Back to the Future

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“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”

—A. A. Milne (1882–1956), English author best known for creating Winnie-the-Pooh and stories that continue to shape how we remember childhood, love, and the quiet power of small things.

It was a portable Remington Rand typewriter in a gray box lined with green felt. In 1956, my parents went to Lilly Office Supply and bought it for my sister Arlene, who was taking high school typing. After graduation, she “went away”—not far, but far enough to feel exotic to my boyhood mind—to become a medical technologist in a residential hospital program.

She returned home often, always bringing—unbeknownst to her and to me—pieces of my future.

One of the first that impressed my ten-year-old spirit was her interest in tropical fish, no fancier than fan-tail guppies but fancy enough to ignite in me a lifelong love. My one-hundred-gallon tropical aquarium speaks to a piece of my future that settled in and endured.

I’m not sure, but next up might have been some of the exotic recipes she cooked when she came back on visits. I remember one dish in particular. Arlene called it pepper steak, but it wasn’t French au poivre or Chinese stir-fry. This was hers—flank steak pounded thin, rolled up tight, and packed with cracked black pepper. Lots and lots of pepper. She baked it low and slow until the whole kitchen smelled like heat and adventure.

I was hell-bent on loving it. It was different, and Arlene made it. That alone made it holy. My mother, no stranger to bold flavors from coal camp kitchens, loved it too. She said Arlene had a touch. That dish lit a fuse. It was the first truly “foreign” flavor I fell for—and from that bite forward, I was hungry for worldwide cuisine. It was a piece of my future that still lingers on my adventuresome culinary palate.

What else? Once, Arlene brought home one of her Mahalia Jackson albums—a 12-inch LP—titled In the Upper Room. I remember the cover, but even more, I remember the sound: Mahalia’s voice rising from the vinyl like a sermon on wings, wide-mouthed and full-throated, her vowels rich and trembling with conviction. That mouth—large, commanding, joyful—seemed to carry an entire congregation inside it. You didn’t just hear her sing. You stood up straighter, somewhere deep in your bones. Her singing resonated naturally with me. I had fallen in love with Black Gospel in my early coal camp years, and even though we had moved away, now I could enjoy Black Gospel on my own record player. Notes and chords from that piece of my future still rattle my rafters every morning as my soul feeds on Black Gospel fire while I bike indoors or garden in the sun.

Arlene brought many other pieces of my future back home when she visited, all held tightly together by my realization that she was living the good life, maybe because she had “gone away” but definitely because her education had opened doors. As a medical technologist, she could go anywhere in the world. Bluefield (WV) was nearby yet far away. Richlands (VA)–just across a mountain or two–was ever further away. Richmond, which in my young mind was further than the stretch of my imagination, was clean across Virginia.

When she came back home, she arrived in style.

How well I remember her 1959 BMW 507 Roadster, white as a wedding glove, low-slung and impossibly sleek. The chrome trim shimmered like polished silverware, and the twin kidney grilles gave it a kind of sly, knowing smile. With its long, sculpted hood and tucked-in waistline, it didn’t sit on the dirt road in front of our home—it posed. And yet—for all its glamour—it was so feather-light, I once watched my brother Stanley and my brother-in-law Lemuel lift it off the road and set it gently in the yard, as if it were a city toy that had wandered into a grown-up mountain world by mistake.

Sometimes, instead of driving home, Arlene would fly. I can still see her coming down the steps of the plane, with a look on her face fiercely defying the engine’s turbulence to disturb her sculpted bouffant—a chin-length hairstyle with smooth volume at the crown, gently curled ends, and a sleek, side-swept part. It was polished but not overdone, and it framed her face with effortless elegance, just as it did her heroine Jackie Kennedy, who made the hairstyle fashionable.

Arlene had exquisite taste in clothing, too—expensive, yes, but timeless. She didn’t follow fashion; she curated it. Her closet was a study in fine fabrics: tailored wool skirts, cashmere sweaters so soft they seemed to hold their own breath, and coats that whispered elegance with every movement. She favored deep, dramatic colors—navy, charcoal, forest green, black—tones my mother thought too somber for a woman her young age.

But Arlene wore them with such composure that you’d never question it. Even in our modest home, she had the poise of someone just back from Paris or somewhere so far away it sounded like it should be whispered.

In my young mind, she had arrived, not only with all the quiet showings of her success but also with the equally quiet sharing of her largesse. She was religious in sending money to my parents—especially as my dad began his retirement from the coal mines—and later to me when I started college.

In all of those ways, I saw in her life pieces of my own future.

But when Arlene “went away,” she left behind one piece that might have had an impact on me—equal to if not greater than—the other pieces of my future that she brought back home with every visit.

Her Remington Rand typewriter in a gray box lined with green felt.

My sister Judy used it when she took typing. And if you guessed that it was passed on to me, you guessed right. Starting with my typing classes and stretching far into the future, Arlene’s Remington Rand began a remarkable journey—one that may be unmatched in the annals of typewriter chronicles.

When I went to Alderson-Broaddus University in 1965, it went with me. I typed all of my papers, including my Honors Thesis, on that Remington.

When I graduated in 1969, it went with me to Washington, DC, where I started my career at the Library of Congress. I typed a proposal for a concordance to Robert Frost’s poetry on that Remington.

Three years later, when I started my doctoral program at the University of South Carolina (USC), it went with me to Columbia, where I wrote all of my graduate papers on that Remington.

One was more important than any of the others. In preparing it, I found myself in Richmond for a week, staying with Arlene and her husband Clyde, a police officer. She was surprised that I still had her Remington and that I was using it even in graduate school.

I put it to phenomenal use that week. Looking back, I wonder what trajectory my life might’ve taken had it not been for that turning-point.

Lean in a little closer and let me explain.

It was my first semester at USC, and I was taking a survey course in 19th-century American Literature. One of the stories that we read was Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s “A Humble Romance.” I had never heard of the writer before, but I was so smitten by her story that I read another one and then another one and many, many more. Aside from thinking that they were extraordinary stories, I was captivated by a pattern of strong-willed women who inevitably never married. I was equally captivated when I discovered that Freeman herself did not marry until she was nearly fifty.

It was a minor aha moment. I had a perfect research paper topic: “Single Women and Gender Identity in Selected Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.” My professor approved, suggesting that I explore Freeman’s letters for supporting biographical evidence.

To my initial horror, I discovered that Freeman’s letters had never been published. But to my immediate delight, I discovered that Clifton Waller Barrett Library at the University of Virginia had a small collection of her letters. In a flash, I had an action plan. I would stay with Arlene and Clyde in Richmond, make the daily one-hour drive to Charlottesville, spend the day in Barrett Library, and return at the end of each day.

The typewriter went with me on those daily research trips, and during that week, I prepared a transcript of the Freeman letters at the Barrett Library, systematically and methodically using that Remington.

I returned to Columbia the next week and continued working on my Freeman paper and on papers in my other courses, all typed on that Remington.

By semester’s end, I had an epiphany. For my doctoral dissertation, I could locate and edit Freeman’s letters. My advisor loved the idea, as did my committee, but knowing more fully than I the rigor involved in such a project, they urged me to limit my scope to selected letters. I prevailed with my initial proposal. Ten years of research later–with trips to more than fifty libraries across the country, always armed with Arlene’s Remington Rand–I finished my dissertation and was awarded my Ph.D. In 1985, the fruit of my scholarly labors was published: The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. It remains, as The Journal of Modern Literature noted in its review, “the most complete record to date of Freeman’s life as writer and woman.”

But wait, wait. Don’t go. I need to share a few more details so that you’ll understand even more fully how Arlene’s Remington Rand typewriter and her quiet support during that week in her home all came together, and a life of research dedicated to Freeman found its rhythm—click by click, page by page.

The five decades since have witnessed me not only digging up the past in all the towns where Freeman lived, wrote, and made the rest of the world sit up and take notice but also returning there as frequent keynote speaker, sharing with the towns’ citizens all of my findings, never before shared. Those same towns helped launch the publication of my landmark The Infant Sphinx as well as my watershed edition of Freeman’s Green Mountain Stories (2023), the intended title of her first collection of adult stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887).

These days, I’m working on Dolly: Life and Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Vol I: The New England Years (1852-1901). Vol. II: The New Jersey Years (1902-1930). I have no doubt that three towns will welcome me back when Dolly is published. Randolph (MA), where she was born. Brattleboro (VT), where she launched her literary career. Metuchen (NJ), where she died.

But let’s move past all that Freeman stuff.

For now, let’s keep the spotlight on the woman who went away when I was a boy, returning home with a passion for tropical fish and gospel records, pepper steak and black wool coats, fast cars and high-flying planes, and all the other things that the good life had to offer–giving me something far more. The dreams. The belief. The typewriter.

For now, let’s keep the spotlight on my sister Arlene, who always brought home—unbeknownst to her and to me—pieces of my enduring future.

A Reader’s Compendium to Intimacy

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“Maybe the next new old way to intimacy is right here. Voice. Breath. Story.”

—-TheWiredResearcher, b. 1947. Author of A Reader’s Compendium to Intimacy, guaranteed to make you explore all the rooms in your home.

Whiplash!

If I were a betting man, I’d wager the title gave you a little jolt. You paused on Compendium—“Wait, does that mean what I think it means?”—and then BAM! You hit Intimacy, and it was like you got rear-ended at a stoplight. Neck snap. Mind swirl. Whiplash.

Let me double down. The moment you saw Intimacy, your head unzipped at least one of these:

● “Sex.”
● “Emotional stuff… here we go.”
● “Being seen. Fully. Yikes.”
● “Something I want—and fear.”
● “Crying in front of someone.”
● “Letting someone in—too far in.”
● “When it’s good, it’s everything.”
● “That’s what I’m missing.”
● “It never lasts.”
● “Real connection. No filter.”
● “The kind of thing that leaves you wordless—and maybe a little wrecked.”

Aha! Caught you! If you hadn’t blushed, I wouldn’t have known. But don’t worry. You’re okay. I’m okay. And talking about intimacy? Trust me. It’s more than okay. Try it. You’ll be surprised by your discoveries.

Let me also assure you of something else. If sex is what you thought of first, you’re still fine. I’ll prove it to you. I wanted to sprinkle some hard data into this essay, like the suggestive power of scattering rose petals on bedroom sheets, so I googled:

“How many times a day do people think about intimacy?”

What popped up first? Guess. Every hit focused on some aspect of sex, and since I’ve already gone down that rabbit hole, let me share what I found. Men think about sex 19 times a day; women, 10.

But sex is just one slice of intimacy. So if something else popped up as your first thought, you’re in good company. As a matter of fact, many studies don’t even include physical closeness in defining intimacy.

Instead, they zero in on what intimacy requires before it even begins: establishing trust, cultivating closeness, and voicing truth aloud.

Some experts get really specific and focus on what they call the 5 As of intimacy:

● Attention to the present moment–observing, listening, and noticing all the feelings at play in the relationships.
● Acceptance of ourselves and others just as we are.
● Appreciation of all our gifts, our limits, and our longings as human beings.
● Affection shown through holding and touching.
● Allowing life and love to be just as they are, with all their ecstasy and ache, without trying to take control.

Other experts focus on the 5 Cs of intimacy:

● Communication–talking openly, honestly, and respectfully.
● Compatibility–sharing core values and goals.
● Commitment–showing up and working through challenges together.
● Care–expressing love through empathy, support, and small gestures.
● Compromise–meeting in the middle to make sure both people feel heard, valued, and respected.

Also, the experts have recommendations for keeping intimacy alive and well in the bedroom. Well. Good grief. Somebody needs to tell the experts that houses have more rooms than the bedroom. Joking aside, most of the tips circle back to sex. So let me share one that doesn’t. I stumbled on it the other day. It’s the 2-2-2 rule that goes like this. Committed couples should go on a date once every two weeks, spend a weekend away every two months, and take a week-long vacation every two years.

I’m fascinated by that rule, but just to be transparent: I’d need more dates, more getaways, and more week-long vacays. Preferably soon. Preferably with someone special who knows how to linger over dessert and pillow talk and other sweet nuthins that mean everything.

Lately, though, something softer has been curling around the edges of my mind. It’s something that doesn’t require a plane ticket or a fancy reservation. All it needs is a dedicated space, a good voice, and the willingness to listen.

Are you ready? It’s so incredibly simple.

Reading aloud to someone.

Can you imagine?

Actually, I can. I don’t know about you, but I love reading aloud. I always have. As an educator, reading literary selections aloud to my students is one of my greatest joys. Time after time after time, they respond:

“Professor Kendrick, when I read this story, I didn’t get it. But hearing you read helped me understand. Now, I get it.”

I think I know why. Reading aloud requires understanding not just the meaning strung out in words but also the heart and soul that live in the spaces surrounding those words, sometimes haunting those spaces, and sometimes hoping and longing for release that comes only when the words hear themselves spoken, knowing that they’ve been set free through sharing. Author. Reader. Listener. Intertwined. Joined. One. It’s one of the most intimate moments ever, even if fleeting.

Occasionally, that moment becomes even more intimate when words catch the reader off guard and nuanced meanings surface as the words roll off the tongue, releasing a sudden floodgate of tears, falling unexpectedly but without need of apology or explanation.

It’s happened to me more than once, but I most remember what happened when I taught Thomas Wolfe’s “The Lost Boy” for the first time. I loved the story from the start, and I was confident of my ability to lead a general class discussion built around the question:

“Who is the lost boy in the novella?

“Eugene? Grover? How do you know. Where’s the textual evidence to support your claim?”

Just as we were ending our lively and spirited class conversation, I decided to read the last paragraph.

“And out of the enchanted wood, that thicket of man’s memory, Eugene knew that the dark eye and the quiet face of his friend and brother—poor child, life’s stranger, and life’s exile, lost like all of us, a cipher in blind mazes, long ago—the lost boy was gone forever, and would not return.”

With quivering voice and with tears moistening my cheeks, I made it through the final words, realizing as I had never realized before, the existential pain that comes with knowing how lost we all are on life’s journey.

There I stood in all my vulnerability. There my students sat, seeing me in that moment. And then, we all understood simply because I had read aloud.

The intensity of that intimate moment remains unforgettable.

I’ve never tried reading aloud in a relationship, but I’d love to try it. I’m thinking that it would be slow burn. I’m thinking that it would be like foreplay for the soul.

I’ll take credit for the sultriness that I just brought to the notion of reading aloud to someone. But when it comes to the idea itself, I’ll have to give credit to a neighbor. We were enjoying a cocktail, and somewhere between Gin-and-Tonic sips, Gary started telling me about the reading ritual he and his late wife practiced daily:

● Same time.
● Same place.
● Different books, usually.
● Breaking the silence, whenever desired, to share a passage aloud.

As he kept talking, I watched and listened, spellbound. He was transported if only for a few fleeting moments to a lifetime of fleeting moments when he and Jody read together in a ritual so profound that it transcended the physical and found home in heart and soul.

Actually, neither Gary nor Jody can claim the ritual as theirs. Couples have been doing it forever.

Step back in American history to Thomas and Martha Jefferson. They were known to spend evenings at Monticello reading novels and poetry to each other, their voices soft against the candlelight of a Virginia evening. It was one of the few quiet pleasures in a life that was otherwise noisy with politics.

Several presidencies later, John and Abigail Adams read political theory, plays, and moral philosophy aloud to each other—sometimes in the same room, sometimes through the pages of their legendary letters. Shared reading was one way they kept their minds, and their marriage, sharp.

Hop to the other side of the Pond and fast forward to the next century and we’ll find Queen Victoria and Prince Albert often reading poetry aloud in the evenings—sometimes in English, sometimes in German. Victoria later wrote in her journals that Albert’s voice brought her calm. Their reading wasn’t just education. It was connection.

Reading aloud to each other isn’t just a thing of the past either.

Fast forward to the present. Everyone knows that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter—married for 77 years—read the Bible aloud to one another every single night, even when they were apart. When travel or illness intervened, they kept the tradition alive by phone. It wasn’t about religion so much as rhythm. A ritual. A bond.

Another presidential couple, Barack and Michelle Obama, often speak about sharing books with each other—discussing what they’re reading, trading pages, sometimes reading passages aloud. For them, books are not only a window into each other’s minds but also a way to stay close while being in the public eye.

Even acting duos like Michael McKean and Annette O’Toole read books aloud to each other. They’ve done so for decades, weaving stories into the fabric of their relationship like a shared language.

Now that I’ve got my rhythm going, let me share with you something that I’ve known all along. Literature is filled with couples who share books, poems, and whispered lines by firelight.

I’m thinking about Hazel & Augustus in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. They read An Imperial Affliction aloud to each other, sharing lines that feel like lifelines. It’s tender, flirty, and heartbreaking.

Or what about Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe in L. M. Montgomery’s Anne’s House of Dreams? As their relationship deepens, they read poetry and essays together, sometimes aloud. It’s subtle, romantic, and tied to their shared love of words and growth.

I guess I should mention The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Several characters read aloud to each other throughout wartime, showing that community forms through books and shared voices and that reading as intimacy outlasts chaos.

But I’m not going to talk about any of those literary works. They’re all lovely, earnest, and romantic. But I want something different. I want something quieter. I want to talk about Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. After fire and blindness and the long stretch of absence, it’s Jane who reads aloud to Mr. Rochester. She does it not to dazzle, not to perform, but simply to be there. Her voice becomes his window to the world—and maybe even back to himself. It’s not just love—it’s restoration, offered one word at a time.

And that’s the kind of reading aloud that I’m moving toward at this point in my life. I want it to be not just a ritual of sharing aloud but also a ritual of staying in place.

It’s a ritual that I’ve never practiced in a relationship. But I’m ready to give it a try, just to see. Maybe start with poetry or essays.

I’m ready to say, “Pick something you love–or wrote. Maybe a poem. I’ll pick something I love–or wrote. Maybe an essay. Let’s read when we feel like it. Share when we want to. Listen, when we can.”

I’m ready for a voice I know to wrap itself around ideas I don’t.

I’m ready for the quiet thrill of saying, “Listen to this,” and meaning everything.

Who knows. Maybe that’s the next new old way to explore intimacy—not with technique or timing or strategy, but with voice, breath, and story.

There. Now you have it. A Reader’s Compendium to Intimacy. Now you know.

Go. Do it. No rose petals. No script.

Just this. Read. Together. Aloud, sometimes. And when your love reads back to you?

Remember: That’s not just a voice.

Remember: That’s a heart unfolding, anew.

The Nearness of Faraway Places: How Our Roots and Our Dreams Keep Tugging at Each Other

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“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), Nobel Prize-winning poet and one of the most influential literary figures of the twentieth century. His major works explore spiritual desolation, renewal, and the search for meaning.

Once upon a time, in a previous life long, long ago, I started a side hustle. It lasted several years and could have lasted longer. But here’s the thing. It did so well that I had to choose between it and my federal career. It was impossible to live in both worlds. I had to choose one or the other. I chose my federal career.

But linger with me for a second, and let me tell you about something I learned when Potomac Research Organization (PRO) was my hustle. Simply put, I did research, mainly using the Library of Congress and the National Archives. One area that brought lots of clients my way, sometimes high-paying ones, was finding people.

I had a solid track record for locating lost heirs, sometimes in cemetery plots. But that was okay: I still found them and took pride in knowing that my sleuthing had paid off even though previous efforts by others–often licensed private investigators–had failed. I attributed my success then–and even now, looking back–to something anecdotal perhaps, but it always proved true. Most people never go too far away from home. Most people stay near their roots, usually within 300 miles or so.

Over and over again, I’d say:

“Tell me where the person was born, and I’ll find the heirs.”

I always did.

Once, I found someone far closer: within a half mile of where my search began. My client was a DC businessman who was adopted at birth. He was looking for his mother. I do not need to bore you with all the details, nor would I even if I could remember them all. Jack–not his real name, but he has to have one–didn’t have a lot of information, but he had enough that I decided to take his case.

● Date of Birth: August 1943.
● Place of Birth: DC.
● Mother’s Maiden Name: Jones (fictitious, just like my client’s first name).
● Mother’s Place of Birth: Iowa.

I started by exploring published cemetery records across the entire state of Iowa. I lucked out. I found one with lots of people who had the same last name as Jack’s mother. Then, I consulted telephone directories and found a possible relative.

I passed the number along to Jack. When he called, he discovered that the woman who answered the phone was his aunt. She put him in touch with his mother, who was living in DC, less than a half mile from where Jack had lived his entire life. You don’t need the subsequent details, but you do need to know that the story had a happy ending. Jack and his mother reconnected, and the last I heard, they were still having clandestine monthly lunches. I always wondered whether Jack eventually found a place in the new life and new family that his mother had carved for herself after he was born. Realistically, I doubt it. Geographically, he and his mother were never more than half a mile apart. Spiritually, however, he had one leg in his familiar adoptive world and the other in his newly discovered birth world. I suppose, though, that Jack was at home, as much as he could ever be, as much as any of us can ever be.

Jack’s truth is true for all of us. The homing instinct is a strong one, and most people, in one way or another, end up going back home. Some people, though, return to their roots only to discover they’re no longer at the place they once knew as home. I’m thinking about people whose education (or social mobility) lifts them into a new world but leaves them hanging between two realities–their roots on one side and their new opportunities on the other. They don’t feel fully at home in either place.

In fact, there’s even a bit of academic writing about it, especially around first-generation college students, upward social mobility, and immigrant experiences.
Sociologists and memoirists alike talk about the tension:

● Feeling “too educated” or “different” when they go back home.

● Feeling “not polished enough” or “out of step” among the educated elite.

● Constantly negotiating a kind of invisible gap between the two.

Not too surprisingly, there’s a term for people like me: straddlers. I had never heard the term until a student in one of my Creative Writing classes did her book report on Alfred Lubrano’s Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams (2005). Lubrano shows how chasing the American Dream can leave you straddling two worlds—where you’re too educated to go back home, but you never feel quite refined enough for the boardroom. Through his own story and others, he reminds us that success doesn’t always come with a map or a welcome mat.

My student–an Ohio straddler–grew teary-eyed as she gave her report, leaving me teary-eyed, too–a West Virginia straddler, the first in my family to go to college. I could relate. Being a straddler is like living in a kind of cultural no-man’s-land—never entirely belonging again to the old world that spurred you on and never quite accepted by the new world where you landed. It’s a lonely, often bittersweet place.

Ironically, the straddlers I know–mostly community college professors like me–don’t talk about the dilemma that much unless we’re part of a panel or symposium exploring the challenges of first-generation college students. Even then, we focus on the power of education to transform.

In fact, it just occurred to me that until this post, I’ve never talked much about being a straddler either. Even now, it snuck up on me and took me by surprise.

But for writers, being somewhere between two worlds and not feeling really at home in either is perfect material.

One comes to mind immediately: American writer Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. She grew up as the daughter of a dry goods merchant/housewright and then became an overnight literary success equal in popularity to Mark Twain. Yet despite her literary status, while living in Randolph, Massachusetts–the boot factory town where she was born–she wrote to a friend:

“I have survived another Boston luncheon. I’m not literary enough for Boston, but I’m awfully afraid I’ve got to go to a dinner there.” (Kate Upson Clark, before August 1892, Letter 105, The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Edited with Biographical and Critical Introductions by Brent L. Kendrick, 1985)

Or what about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “Winter Dreams”? It’s a perfect case study of what it’s like being a straddler. Dexter Green earns the success he dreamed of, but the world he craves still sees him as an outsider. Some doors open, but never all the way.

Even the characters we celebrate—and the writers who created them—know what it means to stand on a shifting patch of ground. You might have a seat at the table, but you can still feel the worn wood of your own kitchen chair in your bones. You might build your fortune and earn your degrees, but somewhere deep down, you remember being the boy who was the caddy at the golf course.

Poets know that truth, too. Robert Frost hints at this quiet but universal dislocation in “The Star-Splitter.” In the poem, Brad McLaughlin grows weary of hugger-mugger farming, burns his house down, and takes the insurance proceeds to buy himself a telescope so that he can explore our place in the universe. Brad spends the rest of his life as a straddler, one leg on his rocky farm and the other somewhere out there between and betwixt the stars:

We’ve looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night tonight
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?

We search, we climb, and we study the stars, but we never completely leave the farm fields where we took our first steps.

Maybe it comes down to nothing more than this. Being human means learning to live with one foot planted deep in the soil of home, and the other reaching, straining, yearning toward something larger—something luminous—just out of reach.

The tension that I’m writing about here and that we all experience whenever we stretch across two worlds—literal or metaphorical—is not a modern invention. It has ancient roots, reaching deep into the earliest reflections on what it means to be human. Across cultures and centuries, writers and thinkers have wrestled with the same essential dilemma that’s central to human existence—the inherent conflict between the flesh and the spirit. Are we ruled by appetite or guided by aspiration? Are we creatures of earth or beings reaching for the divine?

Even an ancient Egyptian text, The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba (c. 2000 BCE), captures the longing to escape the burdens of mortal life. A weary speaker pleads for release, saying:

“Death is to me today like the smell of myrrh.”

Centuries later, the Greek philosopher Plato echoed a similar weariness with bodily existence. In Phaedo (360 BCE), he writes:

“The body is a source of endless trouble to us … it fills us with loves, desires, fears, all sorts of fancies and a great deal of nonsense.”

This longing was not confined to Egyptian prayers or Greek philosophy. In early Christian thought, the tension was just as fierce. The Apostle Paul, in his Letter to the Galatians, draws the battle lines plainly:

“For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other.” (5:17-21)

Clearly, across time and tradition, the yearning to transcend the physical and grasp something eternal has been a defining part of the human story.

Maybe, at the end of the day, it comes down to nothing more than this. It’s not about the Apostle Paul or Plato or the Egyptians. It’s not about Brad or Dexter or Freeman. It’s not about my student or me. It’s not even about Jack.

Maybe, at the end of the day, it’s about all of us.

Maybe we’re all travelers looking for a place to call home, a place to land, sighing a sigh of relief as we say, “I made it.”

Maybe we’re all straddlers caught between two worlds, peering back over our shoulders even as we gaze toward the stars.

For Mothers Everywhere: Glimpses of My Mother’s Hands

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Originally published last year, this remains my most-read—and most-shared—essay. I’m honored to bring it back this Mother’s Day weekend, just as I first wrote it—a quiet tribute to the hands that shaped us all, guiding, giving, and leaving their imprint long after they’re gone.

“Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.”

–Unknown

On top of my bedroom chest of drawers is a pair of studio portraits of my father and my mother. They’re hand-colored originals, each measuring 3 inches by 4 inches, taken a year or so after my parents’ 1932 marriage. The portraits are in hinged gold frames. My father is on the left. My mother is on the right. A lamp behind illuminates both.

Right now, as I lie in bed, I’m focusing on my mother. Even though her portrait is five feet or so away, she is as clear to my sight as if she were right beside my bed. I’m glimpsing into a distant past, where memories of her linger like whispers.

She’s seated on a bench, wooden, perhaps. The artistic backdrop transports me outdoors. Trees frame the scene, a tall one behind her, their branches reaching skyward, and shorter ones in the background, on the bank of a calm body of water, perhaps a serene river.

She’s wearing a dark dress with short sleeves and a deep-cut neckline, accentuated by a glistening leaf-shaped brooch.

Her finger-waved hair, parted in the middle, falls softly just below her ears. Her eyes are dark and intense, with a gaze that seems to pierce through the image. They are surrounded by her soft, light skin tone, which provides a striking contrast. Their depth and intensity draw me in and make me wonder. What secrets lie hidden behind them? What stories and dreams do they hold? Are they looking into the depths of the world, seeking answers and understanding? Are they inviting me to join in their quest for knowledge?

Her features captivate and mesmerize me, regardless of how often I look at her portrait. Somehow, though, I seem to see my mother’s hands the most. Their contours are soft and graceful, and the fingers curve delicately, one hand gently clasping the other hand.

I see my mother’s hands the most because I know her hands the best.

My mother’s hands are engaging hands. Her hands held mine when I was but a child, and we scurried down the path behind our home where two boulders stood sentinel on either side as colored snow fell down in green and pink and blue flakes, making me believe in magic. Her hands held mine when I was a few years older, and she led me outdoors when our world was covered in snow and showed me how to lie down in stillness, moving arms and legs left and right to create angel wings, making me believe in flight. Her hands held mine a few years later when our world was green with summer and led me to lie down in warm grass, eyes skyward, discovering cloud figures, pointing out the details to one another so vividly that each could see brand new worlds of our own imaginings, making me believe in sharing visions so that others might see.

My mother’s hands are cooking hands. Her hands could transform pinto beans, onions, cornbread, buttermilk, and sweet potato cobbler into a feast, making me want it weekly. Her hands could turn a 25-pound turkey into a bronzed Thanksgiving dinner that rivaled Norman Rockwell’s iconic oil painting Freedom from Want, making art come alive in our own coal camp kitchen. Her hands could measure out with perfection all the ingredients for any dish from any cuisine that she had tasted with no need for recipe and with no need for measurements, teaching me to trust my senses.

My mother’s hands are versatile hands. Her hands could make our clothing without pattern, simply by taking our measure with her hands, making me aware that some things are more felt than seen. Her hands could cut my hair using scissors, comb, and the soft stretch of her fingers, reinforcing in my mind the marriage of expertise and craftsmanship. Her hands could take a pastry brush and turn a greased baking sheet or cake pan into a perfect likeness of Christ, making me see Holiness in the everyday.

My mother’s hands are industrious hands. Her hands could transform a grassy field into a kaleidoscope of gladiolas or dahlias, bursting with vibrant hues, teaching me to see potential in the ordinary. Her hands could hold her side of a wooden pole stretched through handles of a galvanized tub, carrying water to the garden, making me realize that many hands can carry heavy loads. Her hands could hang wallpaper with finesse, demonstrating how effort can elevate even the smallest task to art.

My mother’s hands are inclusive hands. Her hands always opened wide the door, welcoming everyone as guests into our home, making me value open-heartedness and acceptance of others, regardless of differences. Her hands always set a place for them at our modest table, making me understand that meager becomes abundance when shared with others. Her hands always held theirs in loving celebration and thanksgiving, making me a witness to the genuine communion of mankind.

My mother’s hands are nurturing hands. Her hands cared for her father and her mother in times when they could not take care of themselves, impressing on me the importance of helping others. Her hands cared for my dad and me and all my siblings, even when our hands might well have lessened the weight that she carried in hers, showing me that strength comes with sacrifice. Her hands took pine rosin to hold tight and heal the gash in my foot, the scar on my sole still a reminder of what she had learned from her mother’s hands, helping me appreciate generational know-how and wisdom.

My mother’s hands are writing hands. Her hands penned sermons when she pastored a church, making me realize that the intellect can lead the heart to be slain by the Holy Spirit. Her hands sent letters out into the world to those she knew well and to those she hardly knew at all, making me see that the power of words reaches beyond the pulpit. Her hands discovered typewriter keys late in life, determined that hand tremors would not tame her self-expression, making me realize the strength of determination.

My mother’s hands are spiritual hands. Her hands joined the hands of other warriors, praying over me as a child with polio, making me–one of the lucky, uncrippled survivors–a believer in the power of prayer. Her hands walked their way through her Bible and her commentary books–from cover to cover–more than thirty times in her lifetime, making me know the richness to be gained through close readings and research. Her hands clapped, sending thunderous applause into the Heavens to show her thankfulness and gratitude, making me know the joy of praise.

My mother’s hands are clasped hands. As she lay in her casket after her funeral, I removed her rings, took her hands and clasped one gently on top of the other, leaned in for a farewell kiss, and, then, closed the lid.

After her burial, my hands–strong from the strength of hers–released from their cage three white doves, flying upward toward the celestial realm, perhaps at that same mysterious moment when my mother found her way back home and celebrated her arrival with outstretched hands.

Epigraphically Yours

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“A thought that does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action without thought is nothing at all.”

—Georges Bernanos (1888–1948; French novelist and essayist best known for his spiritually intense works exploring grace, despair, and the inner struggles of faith. He is perhaps most acclaimed for his 1936 novel The Diary of a Country Priest (1936), a profound meditation on suffering, humility, and redemption.)

My thoughts have a mind of their own. Sometimes, they pop up uninvited. Sometimes, they spiral into a whole inner drama, as if they’re running their own show. Sometimes, they’re mischievous, refusing to listen when I try to be calm or focused. Sometimes, they come from a place that I don’t understand, as if another mind is in there with me.

Regardless of how or when they arrive, they make me realize that my inner world is alive, unpredictable, and full of drama.

Just the other day, a thought walked out on my stage and started an entire play long before the curtains of my sleep had even been pulled back.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” appeared. I realize, of course, that it’s the most famous sermon ever preached in American history.

On July 8, 1741, in the little town of Enfield, Connecticut, Edwards preached the sermon for an hour or so. Scores of listeners were so shaken they converted on the spot. The crowd’s terrified sobbing made it clear they’d better get right with God. Pronto.

I’ve taught the sermon for decades, emphasizing not only its role in stoking the fervor of The Great Awakening but also its perfect sermon structure: Verse, Doctrine, Reasons, Application, and Call to Repent. Boom! That’s Edwards’ framework in a nutshell.

Clearly, the entire sermon is part of my drama, but it was just one character that stole the show the morning it showed up on my mental stage.

It was the verse at the beginning of Edwards’ sermon. There it stood, spotlighted on an otherwise dark stage, reciting with all the doom and gloom it could muster up for its seven-word soliloquy:

“Their foot shall slip in due time.”

Like I said, I’ve taught the sermon so often that I knew the context of the verse from Deuteronomy. I knew what came before and after:

“Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them.” (32-35)

But it wasn’t actually the verse standing there under the spotlight that wouldn’t let go. It was something incredibly simple: what do you call the quote that writers often put at the start of something? In this case, Edwards had put a Bible verse, but I wanted the broader term that would apply to writings other than sermons.

Epigram?

Epigraph?

In a flash, Lucille Clifton hipped her way onto the stage beside the Bible verse and started her own dramatic recitation:

“This is called ‘After Blues,’ and the ‘epi thing’ is ‘I hate to see the evening sun go down.'”

She stood there and paused long enough for me to wonder whether she was referring to Faulkner’s short story, “That Evening Sun,” before I found myself saying:

“There. She’s using the ‘epi thing’ just like Edwards.

Epigram? Epigraph? Don’t tell anyone, but I had to look it up.

Epigram. A concise poem dealing pointedly and often satirically with a single thought or event and often ending with an ingenious turn of thought.

Nope. It must be the other epi thing.

Epigraph. A quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme.

Yep. That’s it. Epigraph. That’s what Clifton couldn’t think of as she started to read “Afterblues,” and that’s what I couldn’t think of as I reflected on the verse that catapulted Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

To my surprise, next up on stage was Alexander Gordon, Clerk of His Majesty’s Council, beaming brighter than the stage lights, making his debut as the author of the famous Humourist essays, proudly holding up for the audience to see his first essay in The South-Carolina Gazette with its own “epi thing”:

“Quocunque volunt mentem auditoris agunto.” Horace. (“And raise men’s passions to what heights they will.”) (November 26, 1753)

And after thunderous applause, he strutted back and forth across the stage, holding up the front pages of the Gazette week after week after week, all the way up to his final essay on April 2, 1754, it, too, having its own “epi thing” just as the others did:

“Facies non omnibus una, Nec diversa tamen.” Ovid (“Their faces were not all alike, nor yet unlike, but such as those of sisters ought to be.”)

The standing ovation was such that the audience hardly noticed the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) making its professorial entrance, determined to set the record straight once and for all about the “epi thing” that seemed to be stealing the show.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Listen up! Epigraph in the sense of a short quotation or pithy sentence placed at the commencement of a work to indicate its leading idea was first used in 1850 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “And write me new my future’s” (Future & Past in Poems (new edition) vol. I. 362).

No sooner had the OED finished pontificating than one of the theatergoers hurled a rotten tomato, brightening the OED’s already reddening cheeks:

“Rubbish! Utter rubbish! We all know that epigraphs have been around forever and forever. “

“Have not!” another screamed!

“Have, too!” insisted the first. “Shut up before I hit you across the head with a fact! Ever heard of Horace? He is one of the most quoted authors in epigraphs across centuries of Western literature.”

Luckily, their interruption did not spoil the performance. The two of them took their boisterous debate out to the proscenium while the OED retreated backstage.

But then, the director seemed to be taken off guard as a local celeb made his way on stage, dragging me along.

I chalked it all up to one more theatrical shenanigan, but I was eager to find out why Barry Lee–acclaimed podcast host of Breakfast with Barry Lee–had made such an appearance and what role I could possibly play in this comedy extempore.

“I love the way you start your blog posts every week with one of those ‘epi things.’ They’re really thought-provoking. I might just print them out and tape them on my office walls.”

“Thanks, Barry. I add them after I finish writing a post, just as a hint of what’s coming.”

“I really like today’s quote that you took from Ovid: ‘Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.’ Persistence is so important in every thing we do in life. What made you decide to start your weekly blog posts this way?”

With that question, I knew exactly why he had dragged me up on stage with him. He was determined to have his own Q & A, ignoring the way I had scripted the play.

“I’m glad you like them, Barry. I hadn’t thought that much about it, but now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ve always started my posts with a quote, going all the way back to my blog’s birth in 2012.

Just as I flashed my TheWiredResearcher.com blog on the screen with every intention of reading every “epi thing” from then until now, the lights started fading, and in a moment of total darkness someone with the proverbial hook pulled me and Barry out of sight.

Then the lights rose softly, and there–front and center–stood my Mother, holding up for the audience to see, a slew of handwritten sermon notes, each beginning with a Bible verse.

She made no attempt to read the tear-stained pages in her hands. She just stood there as if her smile spoke all that needed to be spoken.

It did. I reembered at once her advice when I started writing my own grade school essays.

“Always start with a quote to capture attention and make people want to follow along.”

From that point forward, I did just that. The earliest “epi thing” that I recall using was a quote by Douglas McArthur at the start of one of my many Voice of Democracy essays.

In the instant of that fleeting recollection, I was on stage once more, the light shining more on my Mother than on me, as I my little drama opened with my McArthur “epi thing”:

“Old soldiers never die. They just fade away.”

When I finished, the lights faded. The curtains closed. Amidst a thunderous and standing ovation, they opened up again as we all joined hands and bowed for the curtain call.

My inner child somehow slipped into the audience, just long enough to toss two bouquets back onto the stage. By the time my Mother caught her bunch of asters, I had made it onstage again, standing beside her, grabbing my own nosegay of words. We both laughed as we realized that those tossed words would serve as the perfect “epi thing” not only to open this post but also to close it:

“A thought that does not result in an action is nothing much,

and

an action without thought is nothing at all.”