The second full moon has passed: Last night was the Strawberry Moon

The second full moon since Dad passed arrived with heat, the kind of June heat that slows your walk and reminds you humidity makes it hard to breathe. We’re in a drought here in Virginia. We’re in voluntary water restrictions so it makes it hard for me not to tell the young girl at bookstore cafe to not let the water just run for nearly 3 minutes. I don’t want to be that kind of person who fusses but this heat has been testing me. Why when I give you $20.40 for an $8.38 charge, do you not know how to return correct change. $12.10 is not the correct change. When I return the dime, you say “Well, I guess I’m keeping a dime.” So, I say, “No, put it in the till. I’m assuming you don’t have pennies.” Confusion on your face. I think “get off my lawn kids, I don’t always want to pay with a credit card.”

I walked the labyrinth Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg in the middle of the day, when it was hottest. There were no trees to shade me. The sun pressed down and I tried to focus on it, the way it burned my skin, but in a good way. Something grounding. Something real.

I’ve never been good at meditation or yoga. Once, during a class, I fell asleep and woke up to someone snoring. That someone was me. So, when Leigh encouraged me to try the Calm app, Be present. Be in the moment, I tried. My mind is usually racing.



As I followed the winding path, I kept thinking about how much life has happened since the Blue Moon, the first full moon after Dad passed. Probate. Estate paperwork. Three trips to the dump. More than forty-five bags of trash and donations from the family home. Learning to hook up, tow, and even backup a trailer into a driveway, something I didn’t think I would need to know. But fortunately, Babushka’s husband and I go way back and he taught me in the same way that Dad would have—calmly coaching me and letting me take risks. Grief, it turns out, comes with paperwork, muscle aches, and dump runs because my family home is in the country where there has never been anything like trash pick-up.

After the labyrinth, I headed to the recreation center before my friend and her mother, who is 88, arrived. I set up a comfy chair for her and held two yoga mat spaces for us. The guide for the evening handed us a page explaining the symbolism of the Strawberry Moon: “The Strawberry Moon is a time to notice what has grown. We spend so much time looking ahead that we often forget to notice how far we’ve come. Like strawberries, growth doesn’t happen overnight. It ripens quietly through ordinary days.” Quiet growth in ordinary days. That phrase stayed with me.

The reflection questions asked: What has quietly grown in me during this season of life? What am I ready to release? What promise will I make to myself before the next full moon? I stared at the last question for a while before writing: I promise to keep making promises to myself. I promise to keep looking for joy and connection. Yes, I will clear the house. Yes, I will bury Dad. By the next full moon, my journey through mourning will continue. Those promises felt both impossibly large and surprisingly ordinary.



The Lambert ladies and I settled into the Strawberry Moon sound bath. The room filled with singing bowls and vibrations that made the room feel fuller. After, we gabbed in the way Southern ladies do. Leigh is one of my oldest close friends. There’s a lot of history there and I love that we can live our lives and then come back together like it’s the early 2000s living in Charlottesville. When I drove home along Route 60 right as it intersected with Rout 249, the road I grew up on, I caught my first glimpse of the full moon hanging low above the road. Once I was near my current home, I managed a quick photograph while stopped at the light before turning onto my own road. It felt like the perfect ending to a day built around paying attention.



The guide reminded us that the Strawberry Moon celebrates what has grown. I realized I haven’t cried every day in quite some time. I’ve learned things Dad always knew how to do. I’ve made decisions I didn’t want to make. I’ve designed his gravestone. I’ve begun making sure forgotten family members are remembered. I’ve carried on.

Growth doesn’t always look like cheery happiness. Sometimes it looks like competence born from necessity. Sometimes it is simply showing up. Sometimes it looks like learning to back up a trailer. Thanks, Tony!

Yesterday the daylilies were blooming. I suspect they always will remind me of the Flower Moon, the moon that watched over Dad’s final day. That connection hasn’t faded simply because another moon has passed. It has deepened.

The Victorians understood that mourning changed with time. They marked it in stages. I will be measuring mine by moonlight. The Blue Moon taught me that grief had begun. The Strawberry Moon reminded me that life continues to grow alongside it.

Next comes the Buck Moon, a moon named for antlers growing stronger almost imperceptibly each day. Perhaps that is what grief is asking of me now. I am simply supposed to keep growing.

Fall Book Fair at Blend Coffee Bar- September 12, 2026 (12-5pm)

 

The Probate Inventory: A Poem

 The Probate Inventory: A Poem

 

The court will ask for values:

of the house,

of the property,

of the old junkers rusting in the woods,

of the contents of every room.

What are they worth? Please itemize the value

Sifting through the forbidden folder of paperwork

That little Me was told not to touch.

  

What is the market value

Of my father’s pocket calendars,

one for every year since 1979.

Those tiny squares he recorded our lives:

what we had for dinner,

when we were sick,

the milestones,

the ordinary days. 

 

What is the market value for

A house crowded with things,

saved by parents of the Silent Generation

who never threw away anything still worth keeping?

Among the clutter,

There will be baby pictures,

forgotten notes,

pieces of lives hidden among the excess.

 

And what is the property worth?

The dogwood I climbed

Now tangled in leaves of three leave them be.

The iris and daffodils Dad rescued

still bloom where he planted them.

Those iris bulbs were Jack & Mary’s.

And now I’m thinking of their dog Krisco.

  

The old Metros may be worth scrap metal.

Dad kept them as reminders 

of his son’s journeys.

He loved the Vibe

a gift from his daughter.

He saved things

because the stories attached to them.

 

This afternoon,

While going through papers,

I found the scent of home.

Dust.

Ink.

Aging paper.

My mother was there.

My father was there.

  

Tomorrow I will file the inventory,

listing every asset of the estate.

But the inheritance that matters most

will never appear in probate:

a father’s handwriting,

a mother’s photographs,

and the unmistakable smell

of being loved.

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I'll be at the RPL Main Library Lobby on Saturday, August 8, 2026, from 1–4:00pm, signing and selling my new books 👻 🪦 Haunted Haunted Colleges and Universities of Virginia (released August 4, 2026!)🪦

Richmond Public Library proudly supports local authors!

Hope to see you there!

One full moon has passed

A writing retreat and a painting: there will be signs

When I arrived at the retreat yesterday, I was not exactly impressed by the décor simply because it isn’t my own aesthetic, and the focus of the retreat is on my research about witchlore in Virginia. And, since Dad died, I have been extra fussy with the Catholic Church because it is made up of people and people really get to me sometimes. So, noticing the painting upon arrival, I registered it as a religious scene but I didn’t stop to process any of it and how it is strange hanging in a writing retreat in the South, depicting a Catholic Mass because growing up there were maybe three Catholics in our school and my best friend and I were two of them.

 I’m writing this during my lunch break, which strikes me as funny since this week I’m at a writer’s retreat. I have a detailed itinerary, and so far, I’ve stuck to the plan, meeting all of my writing goals this morning. Today is my first full day here. Yesterday was filled with travel and research before arriving practically exhausted. I’m not going into detail where I’m staying because I’m still here for the rest of the week and as a woman traveling solo, I’ve known from an early age not to share my travels until I return. This was true even before the days of social media and blogging but I digress.

After my morning writing, I sat down to eat lunch and I glanced up at the painting after trying to clear a phone alert on my iPhone. If I ever miss a call or text, it’s because I cannot stand to have the alert remain. It will eat away at me until I remove the alert. While I was trying to do that with a call, I started clearing old messages and then I saw that I had deleted a bunch of nonsense connected to medical blah blah for Dad. Then, I saw his messages. I willed myself not to click on any of them or hear his voice because I didn’t want to sit here and cry. I set down the phone determined to be quiet when I noticed the palms in the painting. This piece depicts Palm Sunday. The piece is by Alexandre Grégoire (1922 –2001), a Haitian painter “who typically depicted scenes of Vodou, daily life, and historical events in the naïve style.” (Thanks Wikipedia)

There will be signs, he said.

Palm Sunday was at rehab. A volunteer came around handing out palms. Dad set his by him on the bed and we started talking about how Palm Sundays were always my favorite memories of Mass because we got to go outside. As we were chatting, I folded the palm into a cross thanks to a YouTube video. Dad kept that palm-folded cross like it was a prized possession. He moved with it to assisted living and then to the hospital and then to hospice with that palm. He said that he would put it behind the cross when he got settled.

For his visitation, I accepted the crucifix that was placed above his pine coffin. It is gold and completely from one of those funeral outlet shops but I knew that I would put the palm behind that cross and place it somewhere in my house. It’s still sitting, the cross and the folded palm, at home in a box. I cannot even sort through the hospital belongings, how in the world will I ever sort through his house, his garage, his cars, his…

But the little glimpse of this sign reminds me that Dad is close wherever I am and I don’t have to hear his voice or touch something that he touched to know that he is here with me.

 

Remember Me

For my birthday, I asked for bobbles from the Vintage Glass & Pottery shop. Dad and I had planned to go on my birthday and he said he "knew exactly what to get [me]" but he wasn't feeling well that day and we postponed the trip.

When he was in the hospital and it was pretty clear he wasn't heading home, I asked him if he wanted to tell me what bobble he had planned to get me from the vintage shop. He smiled. I remember saying that he didn't need to tell me so that we could keep that hope that maybe we would still make it. He brought it up one more time and this time it was clear that he was going to the grave with a mystery [I should note that that is very Dad/me and the not knowing is part of the magic.] But he also said, "There will be signs."
Today I dropped in because I was feeling down. I wanted to pick up an old sugar spoon but I browsed because it's an amazing glass shop. This piece called to me before I even read the wording. There was just something about it.

This Victorian beauty is an Early American Pressed Glass Motto Mug from Campbell, Jones & Company in Pittsburgh, PA. This mug was introduced c1877. It reads “Remember Me.”

This piece closely aligns with the memento mori tradition, where everyday objects carried themes of memory, mortality, and remembrance. Like mourning jewelry, memorial hair art, and sentimental keepsakes of the period, the mug’s inscription served as a gentle reminder of enduring affection and the desire to be remembered after separation or death. Its floral motifs and sentimental wording reflect the Victorian fascination with emotional symbolism, especially the “language of flowers” and remembrance culture that surrounded mourning practices of the era. While softer and more domestic than earlier skull-and-hourglass memento mori objects, the mug embodies the same underlying idea: preserving memory and emotional connection through material objects.

We always think there will be more time

It’s been a bad week. The kind of week where grief arrives in layers and ordinary life keeps demanding things from you anyway. On Friday, my dad died. And somehow, in the middle of preparing for a funeral visitation, a neighbor we have barely spoken to in eight years decided this was the right moment to cut down the trees separating our properties without even discussing it with us first. The trees were ours! They sat on our property. They were old privets we inherited with the house, and one of them held an active catbird nest. What followed involved police reports, lawyers, and a surveyor who will cost another thousand dollars just to formally prove where our own land begins and ends. It all feels exhausting and absurd. Death paperwork. Property disputes. Bills that need to be paid all before grief has even had a chance to settle.

So, when I walked into a local watch shop today before heading off to cancel my dad’s phone, internet, and landline accounts, I was not expecting much from the day. My dad used to joke that we had “Pajka luck,” and to him, that mostly meant bad luck. I never really believed that. Life is hard sometimes, but I have always thought of myself as pretty lucky. I had good parents. I was loved. Even in difficult moments, things have had a way of working out even if it wasn’t necessarily the way that I thought it would. Of course, hindsight lets us reinterpret our own stories. 

My dad was 87 when he died, and despite the difficult ending, he believed he had lived a beautiful life. We said everything we needed to say to each other. That matters more than people realize until they no longer have the chance. Still, the final months were difficult. There were hospital stays, a heart valve replacement, rehab that often felt more dehumanizing than healing, and an assisted living facility that cost more than eight thousand dollars a month yet somehow still failed at the most basic responsibilities. After two falls, I found him lying on the floor after his third fall and after he had been on the floor for two hours. I pulled the emergency cord in his room and no one came. I remember standing there stunned, realizing how strange it is that people spend their entire lives preparing financially for old age only to discover that money cannot guarantee dignity, care, or safety. After another hospitalization, I arranged for him to move somewhere I hoped was better. I signed more paperwork, paid another enormous deposit, and convinced myself there would still be enough time for him to settle into a new place. But sometimes we simply run out of time. Dad moved from the hospital into the new assisted living with hospice and only lived two hours before I received a phone call. Many people had shared that Dad was probably waiting for the “right time” when I could step away and he wouldn’t have to pass in front of me. 

Near the end of his life, Dad kept repeating a phrase. We always think there will be more time. He said it casually sometimes, almost as an observation about human nature, but I think he understood it was something he was still struggling to accept. We build our lives around the assumption of later. Later we will make the trip. Later we will ask the questions. Later we will organize the papers, repair the relationship, take the photo, sit down for the conversation, wear the good watch. We move through life believing time is renewable until suddenly it isn’t.

This week, while sorting through drawers full of paperwork and photographs, I found several of my dad’s old watches tucked beneath his high school yearbook and my parents’ wedding pictures. The drawer smelled exactly like my parents’ house, like old paper and dust and time itself. One watch immediately caught my attention. It was a 1967 Bulova Accutron Astronaut, an M7. I did not know much about it except that it looked impossibly futuristic in that distinctly mid-century way. The watch had belonged to an era when people genuinely believed the future would be bright and sleek and full of possibility. Dad loved old science fiction and this watch feels a bit like that. He appreciated objects built to last.

In recent years, though, his skin had become so fragile that he could barely wear watches anymore. Even a pillowcase brushing against his arm could tear his skin. I eventually found him a cheap silicone slap-band watch that he loved because it did not hurt his wrist. At one point, he laughed and told me I had “given him a little time back.” Like so many things he said, I know he meant more than the literal words.

Dad always wore his watch with the face turned inward on his wrist, something he may have picked up while serving in the Air Force around airplanes and machinery. As a child, I thought that was simply how watches were worn. After finding the old Accutron, I decided to take it into a local watch shop to see whether anyone still carried the special battery it needed. The owner warned me not to expect much. Watches like this usually require extensive restoration before they run again, and repairs for a watch like this can cost more than fifteen hundred dollars because the parts are so rare.

Then he installed the battery and we waited. The shopkeeper smiled as the watch immediately came back to life.

The owner looked genuinely surprised. He told me he almost never sees one start working again so easily after sitting unused for years. I stood there holding this small object my father had once worn, this watch that had survived decades tucked away in a drawer, and all I could think about was Dad’s words. We always think there will be more time.

That phrase has followed me everywhere this week. I thought there would be more time for him to settle into the new assisted living place. More time to hear his stories again. More time to ask questions about the Air Force years or my grandparents or all the small details that vanish when someone dies. More time to watch him laugh and tell bad jokes. More time for ordinary afternoons that never seem important until they are gone forever.

Ever since I was little, Dad and I talked about how if one of us died first, we would somehow send signs back to the other one. A few days after he died, my reddest roses suddenly bloomed. Dad loved red! And usually, my red plants aren't quite in bloom at this time of year. 

Then, after I finished writing his obituary, I walked into my bathroom and saw that my Phal Haur Jin Princess (Phalaenopsis) orchid, which has not bloomed in five years, was flowering again. I cannot prove these are signs that meant anything, but I also cannot disprove that.

And now there was this watch. This object designed to measure time somehow becoming a reminder of how little control we actually have over it. Standing in that little shop, exhausted from grief and paperwork and all the earthly responsibilities that follow death, I found myself smiling for the first time in days because I could almost hear my father saying We always think there will be more time in the hum of the tuning fork in the piece on my wrist. I guess Dad gave me back a bit of time today. 

Astronaut Leroy Cooper wearing the Accutron Astronaut. 

During the 1963 Mercury-Atlas 9 mission, astronaut Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. wore a Bulova Accutron Astronaut aboard Faith 7 as he completed 22 orbits around Earth. When critical onboard systems failed during re-entry, Cooper relied on the Accutron’s precision timing to manually guide the capsule safely home. He later credited the watch with helping save his life, giving new meaning to the idea that just the right watch can give you more time.

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