Julie’s Journal
My Mother’s Letters
I usually found them sitting on the edge of the dresser positioned perfectly, so as not to be lost as I breezed through my bedroom in a hurry to be someplace else. My name, just the first, would be written on a bulging envelope in the unmistakable hand of Mother.
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Uncanny to the End
We joked that the title of the book should have been, “Eerie Encounters with Rikki.” During the five years of writing about therapy dog Rikki, Chuck Mitchell and I marveled at the “coincidental” discoveries. He’d call while driving home after a visit and say, “You aren’t going to believe what just happened . . .”
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What Burt Wrote
For the longest time, Amazon thought I co-authored a book with Burt Reynolds. It was the early days of that mammoth retailer when my husband and I wrote “The Book of Bowden: Words of Wisdom, Faith, & Motivation by and about Bobby Bowden, College Football’s Most Inspirational Coach.” Burt wrote the foreword.
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Thread of Knowing
This was Mama’s “good room” – what we called it from my teen years and beyond. I remember seeking privacy for phone calls to boyfriends on that oriental rug with exotic colors – deep blue and rust. The walls are still the same shade of burnt orange they have been for 40 years. Timeless, somehow. Like she was.
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Returning to the Birthing Place
My sister Catherine and I were walking along the bumper-to-bumper beach highway and turned onto a road running next to some birthday cake colored cottages. We followed an opening in the trees to a huge sundial, maybe 15 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter. Curious, we looked to where the shadow fell . . .
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Entering the Chaos of Others
The first thing I noticed about the man was his turbulence. He didn’t walk into the store so much as take it over. His presence was like a low voltage force that could ramp up in power without warning. I busied myself behind a table, where I was signing my latest book about a therapy dog and tried not to make . . .
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