Spooky Town Books Author Event, Saturday, October 17 • 7 PM - 8 PM

The Third Full Moon Has Passed: The Buck Moon

The third full moon has passed since Dad died beneath the Flower Moon on May 1. I wasn't sure when I began marking time by the full moons that it would feel cathartic, but it has. I don't look forward to these full moons. In fact, as they approach, I find myself becoming more anxious and emotional. But having something that encourages me to move through my grief, both physically and symbolically, has helped. Instead of letting another month simply disappear into paperwork, probate, and the endless work of clearing out a house, the full moon gives me a reason to pause, go somewhere, and remember Dad in a way that feels intentional. This month's moon was the Buck Moon, and after the heaviness of the last few months, I wanted to do something fun that reminded me of him.

Dad and I both had fond memories of our family vacations from when I was growing up, and some of my favorite childhood memories are of riding bikes together while we were on vacation. I hadn't ridden a bike in more than twenty years, so deciding to join the Full Moon Bike Ride in Cape Charles seemed wonderfully symbolic, completely ridiculous, and scary. If something is scary, you should probably do it, right? 

I rented bikes from Make Fast Cycles, and I ended up changing the reservation several times after it became clear that Babushka wasn't going to be able to ride with me. JD could not have been more patient. He rewrote the rental agreement, changed the drop-off location, and walked me through everything without ever making me feel like I was creating extra work for him. Acts of kindness like this will stay with me, especially during seasons when even small accommodations can make an overwhelming day feel manageable. By the start, community riders had gathered for a fun evening ride dressed in colorful clothes, flashing lights, and even a tutu. My ride approach was much more serious. First, I didn’t want to fall because now falling means bruises that won’t heal for months and possibly a broken bone or two. Second, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I’m not sure why I even care about that. And lastly, I didn’t want to weep. It would not only make riding a bike hard, but I didn’t want to change anyone’s mood.  My tears are emotional releases, not that I am simply sad. It’s complicated and I need to cry sometimes.

My bike was an e-bike, another first for me. I was so intimidated by the idea that I barely used any of its electric features. I spent most of the evening gripping the handlebars far tighter than necessary, convinced that one wrong button would send me flying down the streets of Cape Charles. It wasn't until nearly the end of the five-mile ride that I finally gathered enough courage to try the pedal assist. After all that worrying, I discovered it simply made the ride easier. I could have laughed at myself because it felt like a lesson I probably should have already known. Sometimes we carry more than we need because we're afraid of the very thing designed to help us.

The ride began at the LOVE sign on Bay Avenue, where families, friends, and cyclists gathered as the Buck Moon rose over Cape Charles. There was something comforting about moving together beneath the moonlight. I kept thinking about riding bikes with Dad when I was a little girl and how naturally those memories returned the moment I started pedaling. 

I was so focused on staying upright that I hardly noticed anything around me at first. Then, as we turned onto one of the roads, someone called out, "Hey, check out the moon!" I looked up and there it was, hanging low over Cape Charles. It was enormous and absolutely stunning. At that point, the ride got a bit easier (emotionally! I had forgotten that my butt would hurt from the bike seat.) 

After the ride, Babushka and I walked out onto the pier together. It was a breezy Eastern Shore nights where the wind keeps you cool, and the sound of the waves crashing against the large rocks below was oddly comforting. There were many families our fishing together. We stood there for a while, watching the Buck Moon over the water before heading back.

We stayed at Fisherman at Cape Charles Tiny Livin', and I cannot say enough good things about Eric and Sylvia Hawkins. We arrived early enough to meet Eric while Sylvia was outside painting a beautiful grapevine mural that she continued working on throughout the day. Their tiny home community reflects exactly who they are. They spent years living the tiny lifestyle themselves before creating these restored homes, and every detail shows the care they have put into the property. There are games scattered throughout the grounds, including darts and bean bag toss, what everyone now calls cornhole, and a huge cauldron-shaped fire pit that immediately caught our attention. By the end of our short stay, it felt as though we had been welcomed by friends rather than simply checking into a place to spend the night.

After checking in and before the moonlit ride, I had made an appointment at Moonrise Jewelry. We actually arrived almost an hour early because, as usual, I was worried about getting there on time. They were incredibly accommodating and invited us right in rather than making us wait. I had been thinking about this bracelet for days and knew exactly what I wanted. I designed a permanent bracelet around the twelve full moons that will mark this first year after Dad's death. The bracelet begins with three tiny sequin links that reminded me of miniature moons, representing the Flower Moon, the Strawberry Moon, and now the Buck Moon. A single black crystal separates those first three months from the nine moons still ahead. The remaining nine moons are attached to what had once been Babushka's anklet chain, allowing something she once wore to become part of something entirely new.

There was enough of the anklet remaining that we made matching bracelets to represent what has become our shared journey over these past three months. I truly cannot imagine navigating Dad's illness, his passing, the memorial and now the overwhelming task of clearing the house without the Miller family. Every donation run, every trip to the dump, every unexpected crisis has somehow become a little more manageable because they were there....

Since the Strawberry Moon, my days have been spent sorting through a lifetime. Babushka has made trip after trip to churches and charities so that nothing useful is wasted, while I have become a regular customer at the county dump. Just as we began making progress, a hickory tree fell onto the house. Tony came to the rescue with one of Dad's old chainsaws, cutting the tree apart piece by piece. The limbs are still waiting to be hauled away, which may explain the recurring dreams I've been having about baby copperheads hiding in the garage. They feel symbolic of everything that still lurks beneath the surface, but they're also strangely literal. Probate still hangs over me, there is still so much work to do, and my academic life is about to begin again just as this season of caretaking begins to wind down.

Summer break has not really been a break. It has been a season of burial, probate, sorting, cleaning, paperwork, and trying to honor Dad while preparing for life to keep moving. Tomorrow I will be speaking at the Virginia Writers Club Symposium at Randolph-Macon College. On Tuesday, Haunted Virginia Colleges and Universities is officially released, and that evening I'll be collaborating with the Haunts of Richmond on their Creepy Tales on Campus tour. It all feels wonderfully exciting and completely overwhelming at the same time.

One moment before the end of the Strawberry Moon will stay with me forever. At six o'clock on the morning of July 29, I received the notice that Baby Joseph Pajka's gravestone had finally been installed.

Not once did we visit Dad’s father’s grave without Dad telling me about Baby Joseph and stopping to pray for him. Dad was just a little boy when his baby brother died in their home. He was there in the kitchen with their mother when it happened. Their father was already sick with tuberculosis and would die only two years later. There simply wasn't money for a gravestone, and Baby Joseph rested in an unmarked grave for seventy-nine years. His grave is unmarked no longer. Before what would have been Joseph's eightieth birthday, before the Strawberry Moon had passed, that small promise had finally been kept.

The Buck Moon is named for the time of year when young bucks begin growing new antlers. They are not fully formed yet. They are still covered in velvet, still growing into what they will become. I find comfort in that image because grief isn't something we finish. It changes us slowly, month by month, moon by moon. Three full moons have now passed, and while I still find myself crying without warning and missing Dad every single day, I can also see that something is quietly growing alongside the grief. It isn't replacing it. It never will. But perhaps, like those new antlers, it is teaching me that healing and remembering can exist together.

Higher Education Haunts [Style Weekly]

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.

New book HAUNTED COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES OF VIRGINIA

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.

Book Giveaway Time!

Gathering Our Ghosts: Writing, Memory, and Creative Dialogue with the Dead [Online Course through TLAN]

This six-week Transformative Language Arts course centers ghost stories, poems, and haunting texts as portals for exploring death awareness, remembrance, and ongoing relationships with the dead. Rather than seeking closure, participants are encouraged to dwell in uncertainty, listening for what lingers, whispers, and refuses to disappear.

 Here's the registration link: https://tlanetwork.org/event-6630115

On immortality and liminal space

The Kansas City Times

Fri, Feb 08, 1935, p. 18

I used to believe liminal space was something you passed through. A hallway. A staircase. A waiting room with bad coffee and a clock that refused to tick forward. A threshold between what was and what will be. But this morning, on the other side of yesterday, I’m not so sure anymore. What if living is just a liminal space?

IMMORTALITY. 

Do not stand

   By my grave, and weep.

I am not there,

   I do not sleep—

I am the thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints in snow,

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle, autumn rain,

As you awake with morning's hush,

I am the swift, up-flinging rush

Of quiet birds in circling flight,

I am the day transcending night.

Do not stand

   By my grave, and cry—

I am not there,

   I did not die.

Clare Harner, December 1934 issue of poetry magazine The Gypsy

Clare Harner’s words have been looping in my head since I woke up. Not in a haunting way. Not in a grieving way, exactly. More like a quiet insistence. A reminder that presence isn’t as fixed as we pretend it is. That people aren’t contained by bodies or rooms or even time in the way we wish they were.

Yesterday stretched and folded in strange ways. My dad called me before surgery and told me not to come to the hospital. I went anyway. Of course I did. But before that, there was that moment the kind that doesn’t feel real until it’s already over when he said, “We’ve had a good run. I love you. I wanted to hear your voice today and remember it.” And then, “bye bye.”

It was meant to feel final, even if it wasn’t. Dad’s words were his fear donning a dramatic coat. Even if it was just him being who he’s always been, a bit theatrical and a little too aware of endings.

Still, there it was: a doorway.

I thought liminal space was supposed to be temporary. You’re not meant to live there. You’re meant to pass through, to arrive somewhere more stable, more certain, more decided. But what if it’s something completely different? What if we’re always in between, between phone calls and goodbyes, between who someone was and who will be, between the version of the future we imagine and the one that actually unfolds?

Yesterday, I sat with my dad for four hours while he lay there post-recovery, not allowed to sit up yet. I fed him Chick-fil-A like a baby bird, perhaps a cannibalistic bird but still. He had never had it before. Now he’s a fan. This is how life works, apparently: you can be on the edge of something enormous and still discover fast food for the first time.

We talked. We laughed. We made plans. And the beauty is that it doesn’t matter whether any of those plans will actually happen. That wasn’t the point. The point was that we were there together.

Harner’s poem doesn’t deny death. It just refuses to let it be a boundary. It stretches presence across everything… light, air, movement, morning.

And sitting there yesterday, it felt like that too: like life isn’t something you either have or lose. It’s something that keeps changing its shape. Something that refuses to stay in one form long enough for us to feel secure. Which is terrifying. And also, a relief. Because if living is the liminal space, then we were never meant to arrive at certainty. We were never meant to lock anything in place and say, this is it, this is safe, this is permanent.

We are meant to notice. To sit in hospital rooms and feed our dads chicken nuggets. To hear the “bye bye” and not know what it means yet. To keep going anyway.

Growing up, my dad used to say, “I hope you live forever and the last face you see is mine.” It always felt funny and ominous. My dad did not die yesterday. It feels almost too simple to write that. Like it should come with more ceremony, more explanation, more meaning attached. But maybe that’s the point. He didn’t die. Not yesterday. And so here we are, still in it. Still in the in-between. Still in the strange, shifting, unfinished middle that we keep trying to call something else.

Maybe there is no “other side” of liminal space. Maybe the other side is just realizing you never left. That this fragile, ordinary, extraordinary moment is it.

The hospital room. The laughter. The “bye bye” that didn’t end anything. The fact that he’s still here. The fact that, for now, so am I.

Liminal Space

   This weekend, I am scheduled to give a presentation at the Virginia Forum, an academic conference devoted to the study of Virginia’s past, where I will talk about liminal spaces: cemeteries, ghost stories, Deaf history, and the unstable edges of memory. But right now, my attention is elsewhere. My dad is in the hospital, with heart surgery scheduled for tomorrow, and I find myself suspended in a space that feels neither fully before nor after, but entirely in between. I am in a liminal space. 

   Growing up, Dad and I shared a quiet understanding. It was never formal, never something we treated as superstition, but more like an unspoken agreement between us. If something were to happen, if one of us crossed over to the other side, we would try, however we could, to reach back. A sign, a feeling, some small flicker of connection to let the other know. It was never about fear; it was about continuity, about the refusal to believe that connection simply ends. 

   In my work, I often describe cemeteries as liminal landscapes, places that exist at thresholds between life and death, presence and absence, memory and forgetting. Cemeteries are not just about the dead; they are about the living and how we choose to remember. They are spaces where stories remain unfinished, which is why they are so often described as haunted, not only by ghosts, but by histories that have not settled. Ghosts, in this sense, are not merely supernatural figures but narrative ones, appearing where something unresolved continues to linger. Liminal spaces are where those unresolved stories surface. 

   Right now, the hospital feels like its own kind of threshold space. Everything is paused. Time does not move normally; it stretches, loops, and holds. We sit together and talk, circling through ordinary conversations, memories, small jokes, and familiar stories, while something enormous hovers just beyond what we can name. There is a strange intimacy in this waiting, a heightened awareness, as though we are already standing at the edge of something, even though we have not crossed it. 

   In my presentation, Haunting the Dead: Liminal Landscapes, Ghostlore, and the Politics of Public Memory in Virginia, I argue that liminal spaces enable reinterpretation. Their instability, their refusal to be fixed, creates the conditions for new meanings to emerge. Cemeteries, once carefully designed landscapes that reinforced hierarchies of race, gender, and ability, now also serve as sites of tourism, storytelling, and reinterpretation. They are not static; they shift, inviting us to reconsider who is remembered and how. But liminal space is not only something I study. It is something I live. 

    As someone who exists between hearing and deafness, between spoken and signed language, between different modes of communication, I have long understood liminality as a condition of being. It is the experience of not fully belonging to one category or another, of being present but not always recognized, heard but not always understood. That experience has shaped how I approach history and storytelling, but it also shapes how I sit here now, waiting in this hospital room. 

    In my research, ghost stories function as informal archives. They preserve emotional truths that official records cannot fully contain, acknowledging presence without always granting legitimacy. They mark that something happened, even when it cannot be fully explained. Waiting feels like that, like an unfinished sentence, a story that has not yet decided what it will become. 

    This week, Dad and I have spent hours talking. Not in dramatic, last-words fashion, but in the quiet, steady rhythm of everyday conversation. There is comfort in that ordinariness, but also an undercurrent of awareness that this moment is not ordinary at all. It is a threshold moment, one that exists entirely in between what has been and what will be. 

    In one part of my talk, I describe a moment during an ASL cemetery tour when a group paused because one participant could not climb a steep hill. Instead of continuing, everyone waited. That pause became the point. It was a moment where movement stopped, and care took precedence, where being together mattered more than moving forward. That is what this feels like now, not progress, not resolution, but presence. 

    I do not know what will happen tomorrow. That is the nature of liminal space; it resists certainty. But I do know that being fully present in this moment is its own kind of work, that sitting at the threshold without turning away matters. In my talk, I say that to haunt the dead is not to romanticize loss, but to remain with what is unresolved, to refuse to let stories disappear, to stay at the edge where meaning is still being made. 

   I am not in a cemetery, but I am in a space that feels just as suspended, just as charged, just as unfinished. Perhaps that is what liminal space ultimately is, not just a place, but a way of paying attention, a way of being in the world when you do not yet know how the story ends. If something were to happen, Dad and I already know our agreement: we will try to reach across, to say something, to remain connected. But for now, we are still here, still talking, still waiting, still in the middle of it, still in liminal space.

Valentine's Day: visiting the Lovings

Symposium

Giveaway!

Holding the Flame: A Night of Writing & Renewal

Presentation tonight at Henrico County Public Libraries- Tuckahoe

Research Life

 “I just found 9 more witches bringing my total list of Virginia witches to 18!” so I made a meme.