Eva Marie Everson My friend Michelle and I went to Park Avenue recently. “Park Ave” as the locals call it, is a lovely brick-street section of Winter Park, Florida with specialty shops and restaurants predominately on one side and a park on the other. The shops have enticing window displays with front doors shaded by […]
Amazon Has A Wish Book
Eva Marie Everson I opened my mailbox the other day to find Amazon’s Holiday Kids Gift Book, which boasts 100 colorful pages featuring over 600 toys and gifts. This tiny catalogue reminded me of a very special “wish book” that arrived in our home every year . . . and right on time. I don’t […]
Cora Reads The Book
Eva Marie Everson On her twelfth birthday, Cora’s mother took her into her library, beautifully decorated with French provincial furniture and gold-embossed wallpaper, both which reflected in the polished flooring. She showed her oldest daughter the shelves of books kept dust-free by the beveled glass doors that, with the turn of a single brass key, […]
Body Surfing
Last night a memory came to mind. In this memory, I am a teenager, piled into the back of a pickup truck, helping to hold my best friend’s hip-length hair against the wind so it won’t knot, listening to CCR blaring from the opened windows of the cab. We’re headed to Tybee Island. To the […]
Packing 101
Eva Marie Everson My mother “let me” pack my own clothes. Wait. Before I go further, you need some context. In the summer of my 10th year, I was preparing to go to Camp Low, the Girl Scout camp located on Rose Dhu Island off the coast of Savannah. Recently, in an act of defiance, […]
Waking Up to My Childhood
The cat kept waking me up. All during the night, she’d knead me like bread dough. I knew what she wanted. Food. But I also knew she wasn’t getting any. What I wasn’t getting was sleep. Pure, uninterrupted sleep. I had another problem. A recent injury to my right rotator cuff, which gave me only […]
The Four Teenagers; A Childhood Memory
Eva Marie Everson There were four of them. Two girls and two boys. They were teenagers, my father told my mother over the phone, and he didn’t want the girls to have a record that would follow them into adulthood. It was okay, he said—not okay, but not as bad—if the boys had […]
What Fear?
Years ago, my employer, in speaking of his wife, said, “I don’t think she’s afraid of the devil himself.” I knew this woman. Little rattled her cage. She was a tiny thing. Pretty as a picture. She spoke with a demure voice. But if she thought something was coming after those she loved . . […]