My Blog
Palms and Ashes
What a Time for a Holy Week ID 174062786 © Frederica Aban | Dreamstime.com It's Holy Week 2020, and I think we can all agree this has been an especially Lenty season of Lent. When I was a kid growing up in my big, Catholic family, Lent was something...
Contagious
Lessons from the Birds and Bees Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash We are hard-wired for panic. Good thing, since a ho-hum reaction to the saber-toothed tiger hiding in the bushes would’ve sent us the way of the dodo bird long ago. Fight or flight jolts of adrenaline...
Cupcake
Families tend to be littered with characters, most of them ordinary--playing their vital roles and fulfilling their duties in matter-of-fact ways--and a few exceptional, the sprinkles on what might otherwise be a rather vanilla family cupcake. My mother's younger...
Sure-Footed
It's a rare thing in our transient and fickle world to meet with the kind of steadfastness and constancy that spans decades. How could I have known that in my ninth year, when my greatest desire was to spend an afternoon with my nose in a book, that I would find my...
I Knew You When
If you're lucky, despite your lack of merit or any earned grace, you may be fortunate enough a handful of times for a kindred spirit to come alongside you and walk a ways. Over three decades ago, due to the single-handed determination and strong will of her mother,...
Party of Two: Settling in to An Empty Nest
In the primitive playgrounds of my childhood, my father pushed the hot metal merry-go-round at breakneck speeds, my brother and I shrieking and holding on for dear life. We learned to hold tight to the nearest pole, arms and legs wrapped like baby monkeys around our...