"In the title essay, Vicki Covington questions why, as they confess at a neighborhood cookout, all seven middle-class women who live on her street have each cried in the past 48 hours. Some of these essays were written as weekly newspaper columns for the Birmingham News. Others were written for specific literary occasions, such as the First Annual Eudora Welty Symposium. The essays are divided into six themes: "Girls and Women," "Neighborhood," "Death," "The South," "Spiritual Matters," and "Writing."". "In "A Southern Thanksgiving," Covington reflects on the "family dance" that is Thanksgiving in the South: "In the North they put their crazy family members in institutions, but in the South we put them in the living room for everyone to enjoy." In "My Mother's Brain," the author recounts the onset of Alzheimer's in her mother and how, with the spread of the disease, an untapped vein of love is revealed."--BOOK JACKET.