Friends, it has been a rough few weeks. I nearly lost my mama to a freak accident on June 21, and just 10 days later I lost my daddy to cancer. It was a blessing to hold Daddy’s hand over his last 72 hours, to whisper in his ear words I wish I’d said ...
The almost-antique farm truck is a strange combination of burned metal and rust from years of weathering. I remember the fire that caught our neighbors by surprise one hectic week in a June far behind us. Deep into the rush and importance of harvest, the truck was crossing the recently-cut stubble to reach the combines. ...
It was an ordinary Tuesday. As I made my way into the choir room, I remember seeing her older brother pacing outside the school office, waiting for her to be released from class. My childhood friend’s mother had died after a long illness when we were seniors in high school. I knew her ...
Every mama knows, preschool conversations reveal some of life’s biggest truths. It was my day to have the two for lunch after their morning at preschool, my younger daughter and her four-year-old friend. It was a Thursday thing that year. These besties loved spending as much time together as they could (and their moms ...
Shielding the California sun from my eyes for a glimpse as my daughter received her college diploma, I remembered something my husband said four years ago as I sat on these same crowded bleachers. I was wearing my cardiac life vest back then. My older son was graduating from the same university that day. ...
It was the perfect sunny day in April to watch the Boston Marathon. I left our Airbnb early, figured out the subway stop, and waited my turn to be at the front of the barricade lining Boylston Street, several blocks from Copley Square where it was only about 10 people deep. I didn’t have ...
The sunny wheat field was full of multiple combines, dozens of workers, and several trucks. But it shouldn’t have been. It was one of the worst weeks in the small community’s history. Days earlier, my husband’s seven-year-old brother had suffocated in a truckload of wheat on their family farm. Time froze and the ...
I was petrified of those stairs. When I was in Kindergarten, my family moved into our unfinished basement while another story was added to our two-bedroom rancher. My mother took care of three children and a baby in that awkward, damp space for more than a year. We had a makeshift kitchen and beds ...
As a kid, I was pretty good at math. Not to brag, but I won my fair share of chalkboard arithmetic races. So I could usually finish my homework in class or during study hall. But I chose not to. Instead, I saved my long division to work on during the nearly hour-long bus ...
Locusts don’t invade wheat farms in southcentral Kansas. At least they didn’t when I was growing up there. But plenty of other pests did. And grasshoppers sure could make a mess of a family garden overnight. Now as a resident of wooded northwest Arkansas, I’ve learned a placid deer family can decimate a ...
