After three days of rain
the river now owns
the fields
next to Greenville Highway.

It’s called the French Broad
on summer days when I float
down ten miles, under three bridges
to where the van picks us up.

Broad is too small a word today.
The river has spread like a
lake, a pool, an ocean
as it crosses the fields

Threatens the highways
takes over parking lots
cutting its way through the
Southern Appalachians

Running south to north, like the Nile,
racing waters have slowed
and spread
and soaked
everything in her way.

Even from the safety of my car
it’s frightening to see
the vast wetness that’s flushing
farms and fields
next to Greenville Highway.

~ Robin J. Phillips Feb. 7, 2020

I miss my Mom
Some days that’s all grief is
I walk into the kitchen and
think of something I’d like to tell her

It’s the telling I miss.
Making Mom laugh or cringe
or remember something she
wanted to tell me.

~ Robin J. Phillips Jan. 29, 2020

We’ve been at this so long
It’s kinda like a marriage
Our marriage. 

Charmed by your smile
The twinkle in your eye
And the way you were charmed by me.

I let myself in by the kitchen door
And together, like ‘fixing’ dinner
We fixed a life.

~ Robin J. Phillips Jan. 20, 2020

There was no refrigerator art or misshapen ashtray found when my dad died last year. At least no one mentioned anything like that even though he was a bit of a hoarder.

This is the first Father’s Day for me without a dad in the world. My dad left the family when I was 10. He was hardly ever really in my world, but at least I knew he was in the world.

My dad stopped by once in a while when his travels brought him near. He sent letters on thin blue stationary. And he assigned book reports in the summers, which he’d edit with a red pencil. Being a child of divorce meant minimizing my expectations. Don’t ask for much and you won’t be disappointed.

In my 20s, I noticed a book in a store titled Adult Children of Divorce. It certainly wasn’t a manual, but it did seem to validate some feelings about being a teenage girl with an unhappy mom and absent dad.

Now don’t feel sorry for me. Without those book reports I may have never become a writer, editor, journalist. A life I love.

And I always dedicate Father’s Day to my Mom.

Since my dad died 8 months ago, I’ve been unclear about how to grieve. Sue’s Mom died a little more than a year ago and her grief is clear. Her Mom was very present in her life and her loss represents a big hole today. And although Sue believes her parents are now together, the loss of her Mom means Sue and her siblings are now orphans. I see them shifting and changing as they redefine family.

Sometimes sadness over my dad hits me by surprise, and it’s always a little confusing. There’s still a lot packed into my relationship with my dad. In many ways, I’m still a 10-year-old kid.

Today, on Father’s Day, is the first day I’ve cried over his death. All the Father’s Day stories on TV just hit me. Somehow, perhaps, they cut through those minimized expectations.

In our house, we become captivated by the Olympics.

There’s something about the best of the best competing on a world stage that just makes us happy. Of course, we love it when the American athletes do well. We get pulled into the medal count.  We eat dinner in the living room and stayed up really late to watch the US women defeat Canada in ice hockey. (Yay!)

In this post I wrote for my day job, I bestowed Olympic-sized medals upon the top three lessons I will take away from the 2018 Winter Games. These Gold, Silver and Bronze lessons apply whether you are a budding Olympiad or a Marketing VP.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze lessons from the 2018 Olympics

But, most of all, we are inspired by all the stories.

• Fun-loving Adam Rippon turning down NBC so he can stay with his teammates for the rest of the games.
• American speed skater Maame Biney’s father whose smile is as broad as hers as he cheers from the stands holding a sign urging his daughter to “Kick some Hiney, Biney!”
• Apparently No Gerard is Left Behind. The youngest boy in a seven-sibling family, snowboarder Red Gerard won gold. His large and boisterous family entertained us more as they introduced the phrase “to get Gerarded” into the Olympic lexicon.
• And there may not be a winter sport more frightening than the Skeleton. Who first decided to take the luge and lie down headfirst and hurl themselves down a curving track at speeds as fast as 80 mph? We offer medals to anyone who tries that sport.

Stories. That’s why we’re captivated in my house.

Very few of us have the talent, motivation, and training to get us to the Olympics. But we can all be inspired by the athletes’ stories and learn valuable lessons from their performance-driven habits.