Dwelling Place

This week marks ten years since the Deep Water Horizon oil spill washed onto Gulf Coast shores. In the days preceding its landfall, we smelled oily fumes in the heavy air of anxiousness and dread, a looming, unstoppable enemy of our environment and the economics of our area at the height of the tourist season. Authorities, unified against a common foe, planned and prepared, and coastal citizens waited. I stood on the beaches the day the first oil flats broke apart in the waves, watching skimmer boats attempt to remove flats of thick, foamy petroleum from the surface of the water, and mourning the loss of our beautiful beaches. Little did I know another disaster was quietly lurking, one my family was not at all prepared for. The next morning, my husband departed for work, kissing the back of my neck as I stood at the stove in my pjs cooking a hot breakfast for my two toddlers, the summer mornings a contrast to our busy school year ones. The pain struck quickly, low, and sh

Grabbing my two little people by two little hands and walking quickly, we entered our coastal city’s fish market, our faces smacked with fresh Gulf smells and a salty dampness as the glass doors closed behind us. Joe Patti’s Seafood Market claims to be Pensacola’s second most visited tourist destination, just behind the first place white sand beaches that make us famous. Boisterous, systematic, and efficient, the whole place buzzes with activity any time of day, 7 days a week, and teems with glassy-eyed fish on ice, tubs filled to the brim with fresh-caught bay shrimp, and a staff that eighty-plus-year-old Mr. Frank Patti, a local celebrity, runs like the crew of a ship. Like a king perched on his throne, the second-generation owner bellows out service ticket numbers from the radio handset clutched in his right hand. “Be my shadows,” I repeated my usual instruction as the children and I worked through the crowd to obtain our ticket. I was several numbers down, and an old hand a

When I feel myself floating untethered in an ethereal mess of chaos and stuff, I reach for touchstones, something to connect me back to the people and places who ground me. Usually it’s a quick touch or snuggle from my husband or children. But sometimes I have to reach a bit farther. We were approaching what would have been her 95th birthday and I craved Grandmama. I grabbed my apron and cups and canisters and made quick work of throwing together my grandmother’s ingredients for her biscuits recipe.  I’m hardly at all like her, aside from the name we share.  Picture a 90-pound lady, apron strings wrapped back around her tiny waist and tied at her front, perfectly coiffed hair (thanks, Aquanet), and a smoking cigarette resting perfectly on the edge of a silver plated ringed ashtray. By the time I began paying attention to such things, her nails were always polished in the same shade, her hands wrinkled and bumpy and spotted the way a grandmother’s hands should be.  At doub

35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. 40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” 41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” Mark 4:35-41 New International Version (NIV) Last Saturday morning, as I drove over a bridge offering me a birds’ eye view of our coastal town, I saw the perfect glassy surface of our bay. Determined to enjoy the day, I quickly scheduled an impromptu

On November 30, 2005, Joe and I held the baby we prayed for and loved and had to say good-bye to too soon.  I had carried her for only 25 weeks, and she was stillborn in the quiet hours of the night and baptized and prayed over by my priest and friend and fellow new mother. Our first baby's name was Isabel Perry Boyles, and she was tiny and beautiful. She waits for me in Heaven in the arms of my grandmothers and hers.  Did  you   know  that? Maybe  you   know  because  you  sent  me  a note or brought us dinner, offered a hug, or stood on my front porch a week later holding out yellow roses as tears fell and no words passed. And I’ve never forgotten. Maybe  you   know  because we’ve talked about the hard road to parenthood, and her story came up. Maybe  you ’ve asked  me  where my passion for children comes from, and I told  you . Maybe  you   know  because we’ve sat together long enough to dig deep into what has formed us as people. Maybe  you   know  because we’ve