When You Realize How Old You Are.
I often joke about how I feel old. My knees and back frequently remind me that I am no longer in my twenties. Staying up late will be...
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cassieebrown
Aug 135 min read
When You Let the Light In
I learned the meaning of the word “community” at an early age, but it has changed for me through the years. As a kid, community meant...
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cassieebrown
Apr 75 min read
When the Grass Gets a Little Long.
My neighbor across the street tells me he has asthma, as he pauses from mowing his lawn with a push-mower. It’s early April, but the...
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cassieebrown
Feb 143 min read
When You Remember What You Are.
It’s an unseemly warm Ash Wednesday today. Bulb flowers are threatening to bloom before March, with stems and leaves pressing up through...
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cassieebrown
Jan 144 min read
When the Temperature Drops.
I recall hoping for snow days as a child with fingers crossed. Wishing on the stars that sparkled clearer and sharper in the cold of...
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cassieebrown
Nov 8, 20233 min read
When You Get Fired Up.
The weather is unseasonable right now. A warm snap makes the air balmy, the breeze still scented with the crispness of fall leaves....
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cassieebrown
Jun 22, 20234 min read
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, 20233 min read
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, 20235 min read
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...
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cassieebrown
Feb 23, 20234 min read
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...
108 views1 comment
cassieebrown
Dec 10, 20225 min read
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...
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cassieebrown
Nov 15, 20224 min read
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...
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cassieebrown
Nov 13, 20224 min read
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, 20224 min read
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, 20222 min read
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, 20224 min read
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, 20224 min read
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, 20224 min read
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, 20213 min read
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, 20215 min read
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...
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