RedRoseThorns Magazine took an essay I paired with a collage for their issue about HOME/BELONGING.
Many of my essays about grief, loss, and healing are tied up with my home, an old barn, in the mountains of upstate New York.
About the collage: I used glitter-infused red crayon to shade a copy of the b&w drawing of the barn my sister, Colleen, sketched for me in 1994. I scoured old photographs from the earliest days of the barn (1994-2000): the dogs, the gravel driveway, family members admiring the new garage door or front windows, and our roses emerging. I ripped up a water-damaged Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America to find what I needed to place atop the barn’s weathervane (a kingfisher) and another favorite winged creature who settles in the woods (almost) every summer for the corner.
I’d never noticed the ribbon of sunlight on the new kitchen floor in the photo of my firstborn wrapped in blankets in a bouncy chair with a dog lying on either side of him, so I pulled it out to shine across and over this place that’s both different and the same in 2023.
