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Writer’s Block
When friends and acquaintances ask what I’ll be doing when I retire, I almost apologetically say, “Writing.” I then add, “And hiking, taking care of my husband with Alzheimer’s, and traveling between our two boys in Minnesota and Missouri. I say almost apologetically, because “writing” doesn’t seem to satisfy some people’s need for me to stay busy. I’ve even had a few to offer for me to volunteer in areas they have interest in. I’m not looking for things to fill my time. Writing can be a full-time job. Just because a short story takes five minutes to read, it doesn’t mean it takes five minutes to write. Writers agonize…
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Full Moon
Yesterday was one heck of a day. Actually, when I came through the door at home and my husband asked how my school day was, I forcefully threw my things down. “It was one helluva day.” “Helluva good day or helluva bad day?” “Not good. It was weird.” I don’t know how much of my story he followed, because I saw him looking around me at an old movie on TV, but I told him about a disrespectful student before lunch and two students I thought were going to come across my desk and throw punches at each other after lunch. I already believed it must be a full moon…
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Madman at the Wheel
The savage look in those eyes was enough to send chills down my spine; the kind of look one might expect to glare from behind the door of a padded room. From a birds-eye view, it must have looked like excited children playing with Matchbox cars, sending them into a chaotic frenzy, careening every which way. Cars were separating on the two-lane in front of us as if an invisible child’s hands were effortlessly pushing them to the left—into the highway median and into oncoming traffic in the other lanes, or to the right—straight into a steep embankment recently dug by heavy equipment. The driver of the old green car…
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The Best Things in Life are Free
When I allow my mind to sift back to a time I felt the pure, unrestrained bliss of a child, there are two events that easily stand apart from all the others. It was a time when life was uncomplicated and safe, with the ugly of the world still unapparent. We lived in a little red, two-story sandpaper-like sided house beside the kindest people I’ve ever known. I’m sure they were middle-aged, but Maggie’s sagging folds of wrinkles and Claude’s slow deliberate gait made them seem ancient. They had little in the way of material things and had no children of their own. We spent warm days and cooler evenings…
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Happy Birthday, Grandma
My maternal grandmother, Emma Bell Lane, was the last baby born to David W. and Callie Sawyer Lane in Crawfordsville, Arkansas, on February 9, 1898. She was baby sister to Elmer and Frankie. She would be 121 years old today, and my great grandmother, her mother, passed 119 years ago yesterday and was buried the next, on my grandmother’s second birthday. The following letter was handwritten by her father, my great grandfather, to his sister and brother-in-law, T.S. (Tom) and Minerva (Minnie) Frizzell, during a devastating period in his life. I have left spelling and punctuation as accurate and true to his hand as possible: Crawfordville Ark 3=11=1900 Dear Sister.…
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Hypothermia on the Chilkoot
This week’s extreme temperatures had most of the nation under seige. Fears of frostbite and hypothermia were very real and hearing the word “hypothermia” took me to another season and time when winter temperatures weren’t necessary to be affected by hypothermia. It was summer in southeast Alaska, so the nights were cold and the days were absolute perfection–as long as lots of sunshine isn’t mandatory for your mental health. Three days in a row were the most I saw the sun shine over the three months I made it my home. I had just spent three months of an environmental education internship in northern Minnesota and decided to travel with backpack…
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One Tiny Breath
The baby was battered black and blue and thrown on a table for dead. My mother always said thrown, but it must have been for effect; she wasn’t even there. Well, she was in the room, but she still wasn’t all there. My mother had been so heavily sedated, she missed all the excitement. When she woke two days later, she felt like she’d been hit by a Mack truck. The story was pieced together for her. She remembered going to Lightner Hospital to give birth to her second baby. The baby was not positioned correctly and was coming arm first. Many doctors and nurses were called to assist and at one point my father…
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A Visit from Lex
When I was four, I had my first paranormal experience. I didn’t find it unusual at all, since the spirit sitting in front of me, talking to me, was someone I knew and loved. It wasn’t scary or traumatic and I can’t say it influenced my life in any way other than to comfort me the night it happened and the next days to follow. Over the years, I’ve had myriad “spiritual” occurrences. They did not continue through my childhood or adolescence, but interestingly enough, began again the first time I attended the church I went to as a child. Jim and I felt it was time to raise our…
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Life Isn’t Fair
It is basketball season again and it brings to mind a heartbreaking lesson my youngest son, Wyatt, had to learn. Wyatt was born with a baseball in one hand and a basketball in the other. His older brother was about to turn five when he was born, so he was always trying to live up to his big bro’s standards . . . a tough job for one so much younger. No one let him win at anything for the simple pleasure of winning. He had to work hard to learn how to compete at an early age, because his brother was athletic, an honor student, and wanted to be…
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Snow Days
Do snowy days make you introspective? They do me. Maybe because snow is such a novelty in our area of southern Illinois. Everything comes to a halt. Since our rural infrastructure (that seems an oxymoron) is not prepared to handle the slightest abundance of white fluff or ice, school districts, daycares, social agencies, churches, government, and colleges shut down. Many of us hunker down, drinking more coffee than usual, living vicariously through frosty windows, as birds seem busier working on seeds in feeders. Excitement builds as breathtaking crystals float together in harmonic conspiracy, to change the landscape and insulate sound. And it makes our hearts happy. I am a passive…
