Author Archives: Helen Baldwin

Growing up, about the closest I got to yardwork was burying some poor mussels I’d brought back one summer from a family vacation on the Texas coast. Somehow I thought that hauling a handful or two of the already smelly critters in a shoebox of sand all the…

BARK! BARK! WOOF! WOOF! The guest staying in our rental cabin had come down to the house. Our dogs, Honey and Maple, were banished to the kitchen until our guest returned to her car after a brief visit. I sat down to get back to work.

Our sweet third baby, Jeffrey, arrived on a sunny May morning. Two months later, spinal muscular atrophy barged into our world. Hearing the prognosis of death before kindergarten was akin to being pummeled by a raging bull on one side and a tornado on the other.

As my husband, Randy, and I slipped into our mid 40s, God plopped a little surprise into our middle-aged laps: a pregnancy. Totally unprepared in all ways for a baby, we scrambled with preparations until we were dizzy. Our son, Matthew, who was 10 at the time,…

Before I turned 2, I loved watching “Wunda Wunda,” a children’s educational program on a local channel that showcased puppets, stories, and songs. My mother, preparing for the birth of my brother, couldn’t move quickly enough to turn the television off at the end of the…

Kudos and a whew! to us all for surviving 2020. Vastly understated, last year was memorable. Overall (and thankfully), my family managed to welcome the new year intact. However, a second loss connected to my teaching stint at Brockman School hit hard. Brockman, a self-contained school…

My husband, Randy, and I moved into our house at the end of December 1995. The old farmhouse, situated in the mountains of North Carolina, was built in 1920, reportedly by bootleggers. Surely there must be some hidden treasure somewhere! We haven’t found it yet, but we…

It’s so much more than the turkey. Memories of childhood Thanksgiving gatherings with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins take me to a happy place. My paternal grandmother, Mammaw, wearing white socks and practical black shoes, poured sugar into the bowl for cake icing while…

It all started 23 years ago, this propensity for November to pack a punch. In the wee hours of Nov. 1, 1997, a power outage set the stage for an eventful day. Make that an eventful few days. By that time, our baby Jeffrey,…

As far back as I can remember, I have had an affinity for all things scary, creepy, suspenseful, and macabre. From “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (which includes books, black-and-white TV reruns, and movies), to true crime drama, thriller fiction, and “…