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It’s Just a Number
It was a BIG birthday this week. 60. It hurts to say it much more than anything else. Since age 40, I’ve had some students say, “What? You are THAT old? You don’t look that old.” Thanks. It has helped to hear that. They swear they didn’t say it for good grades; they really meant it . . . they said. I don’t know what I expected 60 to be. Like every birthday, it doesn’t feel any different. It helps it has come a couple of weeks after retirement. Now there is more time for reminiscing. Wow, 60 birthdays. I think back to the milestones. That photo above is my…
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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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Tiny House Sanctuary
It is a cool July morning in southern Illinois and strangely, the air we wear is low. Yeah. Humidity. Summer between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers is unbearably sticky and my white railed veranda is my sanctuary. I love coffee in the mornings there while the sun thinks about burning the mist off the water on a nearby pond. Three years ago, Jim and I thought it would be a great idea to leave the comfortable home where we raised two kids, four exchange students, my elderly father, multiple dogs and two cats, and downsize. One thirty foot dumpster, a moving sale, three trips to Salvation Army, and donating…
