Segullah Journal

THE BOYS AND I I brought our first harvest home from the farm in June—a whole sack of beet greens. The bag sat on the table most of the afternoon and well into the evening when dinner should already have been prepared because, frankly, not only were these the first beet greens of the year, they [...]

by Shelah Mastny Miner MANOLIE NETTAVONGS JASPER entered this world as a princess. She was born in the bed of her grandfather, the king, in the palace at Xiangkhouangville, Laos. Manolie’s grandfather lived to the age of 115 and spent time in his waning years personally teaching his young granddaughter. She says, “Grandfather believed in education [...]

HAD I KNOWN MY WORDS would start a riot, exhaust my supply of Snack Pack pudding, and cause my mother’s voice to quiver with emotion every time she spoke of the incident for the next thirty-plus years, I would’ve simply kept my mouth shut that fateful Friday morning when my turn for sixth-grade sharing time rolled [...]

WHEN I MET SISTER RORDEN I felt dwarfed by her height, but I saw kindness in her toothy smirk. She seemed patient enough with me when I snapped a picture of her sleeping on the night train, so I felt sure we would get along just fine. When we arrived in Odessa, Ukraine, I couldn’t help [...]

OUTSIDE, THE WIND IS BLOWING and there is a chill in the air. My thumb has stiffened and I can’t bend it. Cold weather days, when my thumb is stiff, remind me of my father. One winter evening my brothers and I lined up against our kitchen wall and Dad faced us, holding a pencil. With [...]

IT’S TOO BAD we lost that branch,” my mom says. “Now there’s just a big hole in the middle.” We are sitting on the patio looking at her Japanese maple tree that lost one of its main branches to last winter’s storm. Her comment catches me off guard. Is she talking about the tree or me? [...]

LAST NIGHT AFTER MY OLDEST SON, Luke, went to bed, I knocked on his bedroom door. “I need to give you a hug,” I said. I hugged him good night, wanting to sear the memory of that hug, and the few we have remaining, into my heart forever. Or at least for the next two years. [...]

THE TEACHER’S SCRIPTURES drape heavily over her hand as she instructs the Sunday School class to turn to verse eighty-one. Zippers zip and pages flip, then the room is as quiet as a temple foyer. Someone behind me yawns with a small, soft pop. A door in back opens with a restrained click. It is so [...]

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE your classroom management . . . philosophy?” I asked her awkwardly, trying to read my own handwriting. “Love and logic,” she spat out just as casually as if I’d asked her what time it was. She was mostly occupied with gently pushing away the four-year-old tugging on her sweater sleeve. Great, I thought to [...]

SO I’M SHALLOW. I should be writing some deep essay about love, life, depression, or death, and instead I choose to tell you about my hair. You see, here’s the deal: it used to be curly. Not a little curly, but crazy-gorgeous, wavy-brunette-curls curly. It was strangers-stop-me-on-the-street-to-ask-about-it curly. I admit that for a few teenage years, [...]

I STAND OUTSIDE the chapel doors but can’t quite make myself go in. Normally, Sunday is my day of rest. But not today. My students have just turned in their first batch of papers. Narratives. For the most part, the papers recount tales of athletic glory and dating failures—trite stories that make me chuckle or groan, [...]

WHEN MY SON WAS A TEENAGER he was a little on the sober side—like Yao Ming is a little on the tall side. He kept to himself, answered questions in one-word grunts, and moaned about having to do awful things like take a vacation. He didn’t really seem depressed, but neither was he really engaged with [...]

Rumpelstiltskin cried because you belong to me; baby spun golden, milky skin stained with roses— eyes fished from the blue North Sea.

this day in bleak midwinter. gray sky wraps earth with angel sleeves and snow drops heavily onto soot singed drifts. we are tired, you and I. a train mourns distance. twilight seeps into tree bones— obscures the falling sky. the kitchen waits unswept and cold. you hold me close. we burrow into blankets like two [...]

I got your jewelry, a couple of scarves, and an old dress I claimed just because it looked like you. But familiar though the earrings are, the scarf, the dress, the emerald pin, no matter how I squint into the past I can’t make out your face and now I fear I never really saw [...]

Leviticus 12:1–7 Sand scorches my feet like ashes, a forgotten fire. Sun on my face welcomes me back from eighty dark days to witness bloody horns, spatters of careful slaughter, a pool of blood sliding across the sand black and sticky, like my own, but sprinkled on a holy altar, consecrated. If I could step [...]

Midsummer.          Eventide.          Live waters. You:          broad-backed bundle of golden sheaves hewn down, washed, rushed headlong through death’s threshing current. You:          pre-ripe, holy harvest wrested from these, your people; gathered to those, your people who attend from iridescent pastures. You:          Firstborn son, First fruits of my womb, Firstling of our flock, First raised of [...]

Almost naked, she stands before the full-length mirror, loving her reflection. Three years old, still baby soft. “Look, Mom,” she says, bending backward, her round belly protruding. “I’m so big!” Yes, you are, I say, and ache, knowing the day will come when her view of what is beautiful will change, and she will no [...]

It begins as gentle emptiness, nudging me toward food as though I simply forgot to eat and it must remind me of my negligence. I bat the feeling away, irritated that it comes so often, dreading just a little its progression toward hollow gnaw, sticky thirst, mild fuzzy weakness. Each time it comes— this instinct [...]