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Life Interrupted

February 7, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

Today I expected to wake in San Diego. I planned to hike Torrey Pines National Park with the Pacific Ocean to my west and the rest of life to my east. 
Instead, life interrupted. 

Instead I woke in our Fayetteville cottage to the chorus of birds chirping and chattering. I can’t imagine San Diego birds have anything on  Fayetteville birds.
So there is no view of the ocean, but Mt. Sequoyah towers in the distance, the sun filters through the  bare trees rising over the mountaintop cross. 
Instead of lunch yesterday at a secluded oceanside romantic La Jolla cafe, we dined in Eufaula, Oklahoma.
At I Smell Bacon. 
Next door to I Smell Gas.
Lake Eufaula was concealed just to the west over the treetops, a bit murky this time of year, the winter water churning and turning, preparing for spring, preparing new life.
I had a Chef Salad with turkey, cheddar, iceberg lettuce, one boiled egg and French dressing shot straight from a red ketchup bottle. Bland and boring, I could barely taste it. Somehow it filled a hollow space inside me.
John had bacon.
My father-in-law has pneumonia. He was agitated and disoriented and struggled late into the night trying to get out of bed, trying to pull various tubes from his body, trying to get something to eat. He would have loved I Smell Bacon.
Life interrupted.
talya
Musical Pairing:
Prayer for the Dying, Seal

Dear Daddy

February 1, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

Daddy - Thomas Tate
Yesterday you missed another birthday. Your 76th.
Nineteen years flew by in a blur. Tate is nineteen now. So much has happened in nineteen years—some incredible, some impossible to imagine.
Farming has changed. You won’t believe this but we now have………..round cotton bales! Craziness.
And other farming news, something I never dreamed would happen, the Wilson family sold Lee Wilson & Company. Sold out to a huge landowner from Missouri. The beginning of a new era for Mississippi County.
And speaking of home, Osceola has a gigantic, new Wal-Mart sitting in a field near the interstate. Yes, this means another tired empty building in town. I haven’t been inside the new store yet, but according to my Facebook friends, no one can find anything.
Yes, you missed out on the phenomenon that is Facebook. I’m not going to explain it, you wouldn’t like it anyway.
You were spared the tragedy of September 11. We were attacked by terrorists on our own soil, bringing the country together just for a moment before returning to bickering among ourselves.
And, by the way, our country and entire planet is suffering from global warming.
Oh, with respect to the planets, Pluto is no longer one.
There are nineteen years’ worth of regular, everyday, amazing things I could broadcast about your four grandchildren, too many for this letter. Just know you live on in them.
Many of your friends are gone now too—Clide, Bert, Charles Crigger…Maybe you celebrated your birthday with them? Maybe that’s why we’ve had this recent crazy weather?
Round Cotton Bales
 Grace Grits and Gardening

Musical Pairing:

Conway Twitty, That’s My Job

What’s in a Name

January 14, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

The rules of phonics were pounded into our heads from the start of Kindergarten. Sound-it-out. Find the vowels, short or long?, blend with the consonants, syllable by syllable, beware the silent e… We learned this as soon as we mastered the Alphabet Song.

These same teachers who preached the Phonics Game couldn’t follow their own simple rules when it came to pronouncing my name.

As a kid, I was quiet and shy and preferred to live beneath a cloak of invisibility. My name made this impossible.  On the first day of school, when the teacher came to my name on her seating chart, she stared blankly, trying to twist her tongue into the proper shape to summon the correct sound. Seconds ticked by feeling more like slow motion minutes while kids turned and stared, knowing my name would soon be butchered. This was cause for rip-roaring laughter. This was the Phonics Game in action. Everyone knew my name was next, she had already perfectly pronounced Timmy Stone. I always came after Timmy Stone and before Clay Wade.

School was predictable. Life was predictable. Everything was predictable other than my name.

I wanted to scream, “Just sau̇nd ət au̇t!” 

I can blame Daddy for my odd name. He was a farmer and a man of few words who chose the occasion of my birth to become involved in such girl related things.

In 1962, living in the Mississippi delta surrounded by farmland, he came up with the strangest name ever to be given a baby girl born in the Osceola Memorial Hospital. Back when the top five girl names were Lisa, Marie, Susan, Karen, Linda I got Talya. 

Talya Tate. Oh the alliteration.

I was kər-səd!

Daddy alleged he came up with the name while reading the book South Pacific (a Polynesian chick? a hot war nurse?) What if he had been reading To Kill a Mockingbird? 

Regardless, I think beer drinking was involved.

As I’ve become acquainted with more writers, I’ve met many who have changed their names to something more unique, a name more reflective of their personalities. With my name, Daddy gave me permission to be different from Day One. It just took me a while to figure it out, to sound it out.

He’s been gone eighteen years, but I still have his copy of South Pacific. The pages are yellowed and brittle and smell of a different life. Someday soon, I shall read it.

talya

Name, Goo Goo Dolls

fyi…

Talya is a small village in the Holalkere taluk near Chitradurga district, Karnataka State, India.
The name Talya is a Hebrew baby name. In Hebrew the meaning of the name Talya is:Dew of heaven.
The baby girl name Talya comes from the Indian word which means, “Reach bearer.”
Means Born at Christmas. From the Russian name Natalya.

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Hi! I'm Talya Tate Boerner. Writer, Reader, Arkansas Master Naturalist / Master Gardener, Author of

THE ACCIDENTAL SALVATION OF GRACIE LEE (2016)

GENE, EVERYWHERE: a life-changing visit from my father-in-law (2020)

BERNICE RUNS AWAY (2022)

THE THIRD ACT OF THEO GRUENE (coming 2025)

Recent Ramblings:

  • Sunday Letter: 11.23.25
  • Maggie and Miss Ladybug: My New Children’s Nature Book
  • Sunday Letter: November 9, 2025
  • Sunday Letter: Oct 26, 2025
  • Sunday Letter: Oct 5, 2025

Novels:

Coloring Books:

Fiction-Themed Coloring Books

Backyard Phenology:

Children’s Nature Book:

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