Distrustful Cat wonders who is at the door — Photo by Terrye Turpin I’ve legally changed my name one time. When I married my first husband, I took his last name, and it has stuck through a divorce and a second marriage. Turpin is unusual enough, but my first name is the one that strikes fear in the … Continue reading You Can Blame My Mother
Tag: personal essay
You Can Lead a Pill Bug to Water…
But You Can’t Make Them Do Much Else. Photo by Terrye Turpin I’d been thinking about adopting a cat. I wanted a soft, purring companion, one that wouldn’t demand I hand over the remote as they snuggled up next to me on the couch. My vision didn’t include dumping out the litter box. Despite numerous calculations, … Continue reading You Can Lead a Pill Bug to Water…
The Summer of Lemons
Photo by Terrye Turpin I moved into my first apartment in 1979. The place came with shag carpet striped in an acid trip rainbow of purple, green, and brown. By the time my roommate Ann and I lived there the rug had collected a gummy overlay of tobacco and pot smoke, beer, and other substances we … Continue reading The Summer of Lemons
A Day Like Any Other
Oklahoma City National Memorial Photo by Terrye Turpin 168 bronze and glass chairs, arranged in 9 rows, stretched across the green field. My fiance Andrew and I drove up to Oklahoma City the day before, a Friday, and spent an endless, tiring day at the car dealership where Andrew negotiated the purchase of used BMW. I … Continue reading A Day Like Any Other
The Things I Kept
Photo by Don Agnello on Unsplash I packed up my apartment in one afternoon, amazed at the amount and the variety of useless stuff I collected in fourteen months. Some of it I had when I moved in, but not the one hundred plus ketchup packets or the fifty little plastic sleeves of soy sauce. I … Continue reading The Things I Kept
Here in the Dark Beside You
Carlsbad Caverns — Photo by Terrye Turpin I hesitated in the candlelight in front of the locked metal gate seven hundred and fifty feet underground. The cave was slightly warmer than the inside of a refrigerator and smelled of mildew and the earthy scent of bat guano. As I inhaled the cool, moist air I glanced around me … Continue reading Here in the Dark Beside You
The Rivers
Photo by Terrye Turpin — Llano, Texas We arrived in San Saba, Texas, the Pecan Capital of the World, in the hot late afternoon, in time to check into our hotel and stash the packs filled with what we thought we’d need for the weekend. My fiancé, Andrew, and I wandered down the small town street while I … Continue reading The Rivers
The Changing Room
Photo by Terrye TurpinThe scar on my breast is a dark reddish brown, fading slowly at the edges. It is curved, like a parenthesis. There is a slight indentation, a flat spot under the blemish that shows when I stand in profile. The scar is hidden, even by my most revealing bathing suit. Most of the … Continue reading The Changing Room
The Queens of Summer Camp
There were two groups of people in the small town I grew up in, those who went to church and those who didn’t. The church goers were overwhelmingly either Southern Baptist or Methodist. There were some Catholics over on the east side of town, but they mostly kept to themselves except for their annual Christmas … Continue reading The Queens of Summer Camp
Let's Get Out of Here 