Not everyone at Orthodox Writers Week at the Beach this year worked in paper or pixels. Orthodox iconographer Heather MacKean’s project took the form of egg tempera paint on a wooden board. The icon, Saints of North America, features eight standing saints from North American Orthodox history, as well as the Theotokos, looking down from above. She was putting finishing touches on the icon before sending it on its way to a church in Victoria, British Columbia. Heather has created … [Read more...]
I Become the Murderer’s Mom
I walked back to the car seeing nothing but the putty-colored wet sidewalk under my feet. As I walked by the door to the lecture room where the parents were, I heard a woman give a wail of grief. I shivered at the pain and terror and wondered if it was Angela. I tried to avert my eyes from the memorial wall that was taking shape along the plate-glass windows of the cafeteria. The flowers and photos and teddy bears forced themselves into my vision, the flowers already broken and wilting, the … [Read more...]
Questions about Melody
Neither of the two men looked back at me as they walked. Our footsteps echoed in the empty corridor, and my feet were still cold and from standing in the rain. But mostly I saw the backs of their suits, dark as black in the greenish hallway light, as if they were a couple of undertakers and I was being taken to see the casket.We walked down the hall and up to the second floor to a corridor of office doors. One of the men unlocked an office door and went inside. The second held the door for me, … [Read more...]
Falling Water
If the shooting was at 10:15, and I got to the campus at 11, then we parents must have been standing in the rain for an hour and a half or two hours before they opened a lecture room and let us sit down.Every once in a while, an administrator would come to the podium, looking shell-shocked and dazed, and say something about how devastated they all were. There would always be at least one voice, a man on the verge of tears, telling her -- the administrator always seemed to be a “her,” but never … [Read more...]
‘My Baby’
Angela and I stood together shivering, more from the chill inside ourselves than from the weather, talking to the other parents as they gathered at the door, waiting. They all have a story to tell, of when they saw their child last. Child -- at times like this, the hulking 240-pound linebacker becomes, once again, “My baby.”I had ignored Melody’s phone call. The memory lacerated like a whip.At a time like this some people talk, and some don’t. Some tell stories, and some complain that nobody has … [Read more...]