Category: Essays
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Suddenly Summer
When you work nights, it’s hard to appreciate the gradual onset of spring in the Valley. Driving home as the sun peeks over the mountains, the trees offer brief glimpses of the season’s change—outlines of bright green and pink and white. Tulips and daffodils crowd my front walk as I pull up the driveway. Then…
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Dog Days: Holiday Edition
IT’S THE DAY after Thanksgiving and the first truly cold day of this winter season. Hannah’s only home until the train carries her back to Washington, DC tonight, so we went out to get the Christmas tree before she left us. The high today was thirty degrees, but the wind chill made it feel closer…
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The Science of Snoozing
LAST NIGHT, with Marcy on a date and Olivia at a Friendsgiving dinner, we had time with just the OGs—that’s what my oldest daughter, Hannah, calls the three of us—the Original Girards. She’s home for Thanksgiving, enjoying quiet Mount Sidney, away from her busy life in Washington, DC. The doggies, third-generation canine Girards, settled in…
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Giving Thanks in Tough Times
This year wasn’t easy in our household. Money was tight. The political climate felt hostile—especially toward my family. There were two breakups, both raw. It would have been easy to let gratitude get lost in the haze of hardship. But I’m determined to look back on the past twelve months with a lens of thankfulness.…
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Behind the Smile: Art, Identity, and the Power of Telling Your Own Story
November hosts Transgender Awareness Week. This year, I wanted to honor my daughter not just as her mother, but as someone who sees her—truly sees her—and believes her. Sometimes art expresses what words alone cannot. Artist StatementThis piece is a representation of dysphoria and how it can feel like a villain, hunting you down and…
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Dog Days: Notes from the Den
Meet Ruthie and William: the den’s resident odd couple, canine comedians, and daily inspiration. Some writers have muses. I have something better: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Girard and William Shakespeare Girard. They’re my den-mates, comic relief, and daily reminder that character really is destiny. Ruthie weighs six pounds and carries herself like a Supreme Court justice with…
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Writer’s Retreat
Truly, Smith Mountain Lake is a beautiful place. Something about being there in mid-November was especially serene. No jet skis, although I did spot one brave waterskier tucked into a wetsuit. But mostly, it was just quiet. The wind, strong all weekend, was a constant companion, trying to shake the last of the leaves from…
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On the Road . . .
I’m heading out of town for a girls’ weekend, crossing over Afton Mountain from the Shenandoah Valley into the Rockfish Valley. My destination: Smith Mountain Lake. But let’s rewind from the beautiful to the mundane. On my way, I start to think about travel. My trip starts, as all trips in my neck of the…
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Morning in the Valley
I STOPPED IN the gas station for a soda. The clerk asked me if I was just getting off work, dressed in scrubs with my name badge hanging from my lab coat lapel. I wasn’t. It was 8:30 PM, and I was heading in for my seventh night shift in a row. “Oh, man. Sorry,”…
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Why Radiant? Why not?
People don’t plan trips to Radiant. It doesn’t even earn a bold font on a map of Virginia—if it’s marked at all. It’s the kind of place Google Maps skips over—not quite big enough to matter, not quite small enough to disappear. But folks find their way to it, detouring off the interstate to get…