Some Thoughts on Dying When You Feel Like It and the Hope That Stops You
It is late September. The sugar maple is tinged with fire, a burning mix of orange and red and yellow, engulfing the green. Honking Vs of geese fly over the barn. One yellowed leaf curls on the grass. Three Sandhill cranes lift off alfalfa field, warbling their way into the air, a trinity created by […]
An Uphill Climb
Think you’re not disabled? Think again . . . We went away together, my husband and I. We left our problems, our concerns, our constant stress that never seems to let up for long. Because when one is caring for three kids, now 22, 20, and 15—all with a myriad of permanent cognitive disabilities stemming […]
Golden Day
Today’s the day. Your golden birthday. Twenty years old on September 20th. Officially, you are no longer a teenager. And you look like a man with your hairy legs, lean and muscled body from running, and face that Dad and I still have to remind you to shave—at least on Sunday mornings. Twenty years old. […]
Time Goes By
Autumn’s crisp is in the air. I can see my breath barely as I step onto the wood planked porch watching you walk down our winding gravel drive to the bus. Your shoulders have broadened and so have your horizons. You’ve left homeschool for high school. With bigger books, with bigger words, you have moved on […]
Off My Rocker
Our second child is now three months shy of twenty. He has secured his first full-time job with benefits. Like most twenty-year-olds, he thinks he knows most everything—or at least he ACTS like he knows most everything. And though he’s still living at home, with all the home field advantage, he thinks he should be […]
Gritty Good
Father’s Day. The family room is strewn with clothes folded and set in piles alongside flashlights and bug spray and sunscreen and everything else one needs for a week-long outdoor adventure. Father and son are engaged in last-minute preparations right before leaving to meet a dozen or so other Boy Scouts and leaders heading north […]