The summer after second grade, I wanted two things more than I wanted to breathe: to finally attend overnight 4-H camp like my older siblings, and to own a miniature dachshund. In the 70s, they both cost about $35, which was a chunk of change. I knew it, and my dad knew it, so he ...
“Oh where is my hairbrush, oh where is my hairbrush, oh where, oh where, oh where ….” Like 60 million other parents, we have memorized every song from all the Veggie Tales VHS tapes and DVDs. (We had kids in both eras.) Apparently, we are in good company. One in three American homes with children own them. ...
I idolized my sister’s hair. Honestly, I idolized everything about my older sister. But her long blond hair, like spun gold, was an object of pure envy. Even as a four-year-old, I knew it was special. Next to my own brunette pixie, it was to me the holy grail. One warm fall afternoon, my sister ...
I am a girl who loves a good list. Long before Erin Condrin, Daytimers, The Bullet Journal, and Trello, before agenda planners were even a thing, I made my own out of a ten-cent spiral notebook. It dictated my day, and my life. It always sat on top of my junior high book pile, the ...
When we remodeled our house, a stately 50-foot walnut tree stood in the way of our blueprint. It was perfect: straight, tall, and beautiful. We did everything to keep it, but in the end, the grand plan dictated that it had to be cut down. The tree became a distinctive mantel for our home. ...
In grad school, my husband and I rented a duplex near campus that had some interesting carpet. It had a motif of a flaming B in a repeated diamond pattern. The rent fit our budget, and not that into decorating at the time, we didn’t think too much about it. A few weeks into a ...
My dad is a fearless guy. And the most resilient person I know. But he’s also the most intelligent human being I’ve ever met. Sorry, grad school professors and transplant surgeons. He’s got you whipped. With such good genes, I thought by this age, I’d surely know everything. But the older I get, the ...
In the waiting room of my doctor’s office recently, I saw a woman reading a bible who looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place her. Then her husband came out to meet her, and I remembered right away. He had been in cardiac rehab with me nearly three years ago. He was the ...
Decades ago, my older, now-engineer brother constructed a complete, intricate N-scale model train. It was more than a train. It was an entire city. My brother and dad worked on that plywood platform, the size of a banquet table that resided in our unfinished basement, all the years I was growing up. It was assembled with ...
A few years ago, pre-heart-failure, we took a trip to Buenos Aries, Argentina, to visit our son who was studying abroad. Arriving with limited expectations and very little savvy, we somehow stumbled into booking a trip to Iguazu Falls. I had never heard of it, but learned it is one of the New Seven Wonders ...
