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My Last Great Drunk
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

My Last Great Drunk

Thirty cans of kidney beans and tuna fish stocked my basement shelves. Gallons of water and pounds of rice brightened all things tinned.

It was New Years’ Eve, 1999.

Newscasters whipped the world into a frenzy by questioning if computers could handle the digit change from 1999 to 2000. Grid systems could fail, many reported. The stock markets would crash. Airplanes might fall out of the sky. Store up a month’s worth of food, many encouraged. Hell in a Y2K handbasket it was.

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Hawaii & Heart Attacks: When the Heart Breaks
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

Hawaii & Heart Attacks: When the Heart Breaks

That summer on Oahu, in our early twenties, Carol and I blew through mai tai cocktails the size of soup bowls. We wandered the shore, the Pacific waves burying our ankles into Hawaiian sand. A glorious confidence, fortified by palm trees and rum, salted our skin.

“Can we ride?” I slipped my sunglasses on top of my head.

The young man in charge of a catamaran was haloed by the sun. “Fifteen dollars. Each.”

Our bikinis left no room for cash, so we turned away. “Hey.” He lowered his voice. “You can go free.”

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Grasping for Summer: Nags Head,  1974
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

Grasping for Summer: Nags Head, 1974

On the boardwalk, the Spicer boys shucked their shirts, the oldest revealing a shark-tooth necklace, the youngest, smooth skin and his dad’s muscles. I’d overheard enough of my mother’s soap operas while folding laundry to know boys were a thing. Witnessing first hand two tan teens on a beach, I could only stare, this summer of ’74.

The youngest plowed through the sand dune sheltered by sea oats.

“That’s against the rules.” The hall monitor in me couldn’t help but show up. “We’re supposed to stay on the walk.” Mrs. Richardson, who owned the pine cabin we were visiting, would have sharpened her southern-pecan voice if she caught us hurting her sand.

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Love Letters to the End
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

Love Letters to the End

By now, the zip of packing tape unnerved my spine. Cardboard dust skimmed my skin. We had one last room of my parents’ house to go.

“Let’s get this over with.” I handed my sister a box.

The oversized room used for Christmas decorations and the edgy books, not fit for the family bookcase, was packed. My energy drained. “We’ll donate this to the church?” I toed a red sleigh to clear a path to the back.

My sister prodded the woven rope that decorated their banister every December. “The Girls’ Club, maybe?”

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Small
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

Small

My dog came into the porchlight, her mouth holding a critter. “Drop it,” I commanded. She’s good this way. Tinkerbell isn’t a vacuum-eating sort of animal. She likes her organic tidbits, bathed in hot water, steeped for five minutes.

A baby squirrel plopped onto the brick, crying out in pain as it hit. Most every household has a designated critter handler. I’m mine. I have ‘shewed’ black snakes, carted baby bunnies into the woods, rescued stunned birds who’d hit the windows and nursed them back to fly. But a baby squirrel? That required round-the-clock feeding. Skills I didn’t possess.

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Bowels
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

Bowels

I don’t believe many of us who marry and say the words, “for better or worse,” truly know what we’re getting into. I don’t believe many of us stick around after the better ends, be it thirty days or thirty years. And I can “guaran-darn-tee” you (my daddy’s saying), that most of us don’t know how to approach an adult and say, “It’s time you start wearing diapers.”

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Magical
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

Magical

The day the world broke, the telephone rang. Being eight, I wasn’t allowed to touch it. My brother had hit his first decade and earned the right to answer. He yelled for Mom. She hated the phone. It tethered her to the dining room wall. She couldn’t wipe down the cooktop or clean the frig with a toothpick, her tool of choice. Dad had installed a longer cord, but it stretched only as far as the formica table.

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Appraisal
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

Appraisal

My girls and I crack open the door to my parents’ house on the hill. It is visited only twice a month by Anna, the cleaning person, and of late, the appraisers. Paintings, tall as my petite teen, line the great room. While high on the walls, the scenes spoke idyllic locales to me–one of a Roman aqueduct, another a rushing Cowboy stream, another a muted Italian bridge. Dad had bought them as originals; up close, the printed versions peek out behind brushstrokes.

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Blood
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

Blood

All for the love of my eighteen-year old, I attended Murder Con weeks ago. Not a chance in Sherlock did this spark my imagination–until I thought of her. She loves nothing better than watching or reading anything mysterious. Solving problems is rooted in her blood, perhaps because she sat in a Chinese orphanage for 7½ years. The only toy she had was the window she watched the world through. Consequently, her observation skills are keener than the best of them. In a world crowded with images, she can parse out the miniscule case-cracker or lost person at DisneyWorld, during high volume.

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Writing through the Chaos
Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy Uncategorized Renee Leonard Kennedy

Writing through the Chaos

The thunder rumbled. My old rescued dog, Hubble, lumbered onto our covered porch, all fifty feet of southern columns and steel railing. The safest place in the world: my spot where I read, gut-talked with friends, cried over my parents’ deaths. It’s like being in a treehouse, surrounded by native dogwoods, redbuds and shagbark hickories. The 140-year old white oak canopied over all. A honey vein ran up its bark, rusty and wide as the Persian carpet down the hallway.

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