Meta Watershed

My mother’s mother Hettie was the first female in my entire lineage to have the opportunity to vote for the people who would represent her...

(Villa Mae Basinger, circa 1920, Tillman County, Oklahoma, age 19) My father's mother, Villa Mae Basinger Barnett, was born 22 Dece...

Photo taken circa 1933, after my mother and her siblings were orphaned. Back row is my Aunt Sarah Margaret Atkins; my mother's mothe...

(Ida Bell Reeves Turner, circa 1920s, Missouri) Lots of interesting developments in the genealogical spelunking yesterday. I've b...

My family when we lived in Kolkata during my infancy/toddler years: L-R, Nilmoni (my ayah), Craig (my older brother, at that point a pe...

In the summer of 1966, my family took the only just-for-pleasure vacation in my memory, in response to my request that we "go campi...

Today Mama would have been 87 years old. Last night I dreamed I was a child again, living with my little brother Bill, Mama, and a man ...

This morning we made an almost-no-sweetener-added blueberry and cream cheese pie, chilling for later, in addition to a salad and fish...

(Praying mantises in Kahramanmaras, Turkey; taken by Mehmet Karaca)   After my mother died at age 56 and my father’s next hasty rem...

Talvikettu (Winter Fox), 2012-13 by Paula Mela BABY BROTHER BLUES When I woke up this morning The light was fulla ghosts When I ...

This is a photo of my great-great-grandmother Eliza Ophelia Hill, born 1858 in a cane-growing region of Florida. She witnessed the Civil Wa...

SAGA DOMESTICA All the stories a family shapes and reshapes are mine alone now. Scraps surfacing without anyone to reminisce over: ...

  It was a no-visitor morning, so I got to have a slow start to the day. Then Tammi and I experimented with a chewy sugar cookie recipe...

My fundamentalist cousin's email today was another multi-forwarded thing crowded far over to the right margin by all the sending on (c...

  SINGING BASS The last time I saw Daddy, we laughed so hard about the singing bass which hung over his mantle that we both began co...

  The year we lived in Brasil, Mama got hepatitis and for a few months did almost nothing at all except smoke Tareytons and read 2-year-...

AFTER SHULAMITH He took with ordinary greed, holding out a plate he never washed, eyes hooded -- Unless what came his way was blame:...

Thanks to Tammi's valiant efforts to keep the fridge and pantry organized, I now have a chart I can refer to when asking someone to loca...

I was eight and we were living in Sunset Trailer Park in Midland, Texas. I was in Miz Davis's third grade, where I was unchallenged te...

In 1974 I took my mother and little brother, along with my partner Astrid and our 4-year-old daughter, to the new wild animal park just out...