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The most painful thing in family living is when family does not get along well… when there cannot be love between all members of the family. Now, it’s bad when a family member dies. But when one person or another doesn’t or won’t love another, that’s death that won’t die. That’s experiencing the death over and over and over again.

My family was and is the love of my life. When I was a child, from the first day I can remember, my mother and her mother-in-law didn’t get along. It wasn’t that my grandmother disapproved of my mother; it was that my mother didn’t understand (or care to learn to understand) my grandmother. And the amazing part was that they were both wonderful loving, caring and responsible people. I have these visions in my head of different scenes when my father had to make a choice between these two women he loved. And I am sad to say that my mother pushed it by constantly telling Dad how irritating she found my grandmother. It was as if Mom went out of her way to recall the things that Grandma did

I picked him up at Vacation Bible School and we went together directly to the food store. He was all excited about having had a nurse come to visit them that day. “She told us that our bodies are our temples and we need to protect them from illness… That this is one of the things we do to please God.” He went on and on about the many parts of the body that he had learned about that morning. His energy to talk and share was endless.

At last we were at the food store and I began to pick out the items that were on my shopping list. He usually stayed right next to me and visited with everyone that passed us while we traveled up and down the aisles of the store. And then I missed him. Instantly I began to search. I left the shopping cart where I had been and went up and down the aisles to find him. I was approaching the meat counter in the back of the store. Relief flooded through my soul. I could hear him.

There he was standing in

He stood there looking down into the water. His little high top shoes just barely stuck out over the edge of the fountain where he stood. He looked up at the top of the fountain where water spewed from the top. He watched the water as it fell down into the pool below. He seemed fascinated by the splashing and the gentle movement of the water. Then suddenly there was no movement in his body. Still as night. He looked like he might even be holding his breath. I knew this little boy… he was thinking, considering two sides of a coin. I recall thinking to myself at the time, “He’s weighing how much trouble he’s going to get into if he jumps into that water.” Just as I was considering the cost of the shoes (water and leather do not mix when the leather is shoes) and the fact that he was all dressed to go to church, I saw what I knew was probably coming: His choice. He threw his little arms into the air and leaped into the water! Splash! His joy

I’m in my house for several hours and the entire time, football is blaring from the TV set. Then comes a DVD that I’ve seen/heard numerous times. I’m longing for some peace. So I share that I’m going for a little walk, and I keep my irritation to myself.

Outside. Man, I can’t get over the joy of having the quiet! The sun is setting and the view is tremendous… Best part about it is that it can’t talk to me! While I was out there communing with nature, it occurred to me that none of what bothered me was noise at all to Hubby. To him, it was a pleasant experience.

A couple of weeks ago I was pulled up to a stoplight with the car windows down waiting for my turn to “go.” Up comes a group of high school kids with their car windows down as well. They have a radio or CD player turned up full blast in the car. Their music to my ears is horrible. All I could think of was that the ear splitting sound was noise and not music.

A myriad of music selections

There is something magical about life when we can exist in between the morning and the the night. It is that time when the stars still faintly shine and daylight can be seen on the rim of the mountains.

I couldn’t sleep so out I went into the back yard to watch the day come. The wind was blowing through the trees and moving things around on the desert floor. I climbed up on the bench around the fireplace to have a better look. So renewing. Just listening with this and that running the course through my mind. And why I thought of this poem I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it reminded me of this time of day… who knows.

It was from a time in the distant past. A certain young man had taken a liking to me and had sent me a book of poetry. In the front he inscribed a poem which he had written himself. It was called “Reflections.”

In that time when mist and light
Are mingled in a foggy dew,
And when the chill of night’s retreat
Sends shivers through and through;
When day break’s warmth is but a sound,
A dove’s

1976: Nine o’clock on a Monday morning. A little boy with tons of energy and nowhere to put it is bugging his mother to let him go across the street to play. He believes his mother’s request to pick up his toys before he goes out is not reasonable. And, why would he? Because it’s time to play with friends whom he can already see on the driveway across the street through his parent’s bedroom window. And, for the past several minutes he has been at war with his mommy. To clean up his room would be to surrender. There will be no surrendering, he tells himself. What he hadn’t banked on was the strength of his mother who knows this routine better than he. And she has no intention of letting her son go anywhere until he does what he needs to do. For the first time in his life, he is told the words that he will hear for the rest of his youth… “There is freedom in obeying!”

The phrase does not win points. In fact, it makes the little boy so irritated that while his

Seems like with our freedom of speech in this beautiful country, everyone always has something to say. And, I don’t eliminate myself from that… because here I am, yes? It seems that speaking is a little bit like a See-Saw (you know, that thing that children play on that goes up and down). Some days you do more talking and other days, it’s time to talk less and listen more. And, these listening days? … They can be great opportunities.

First opportunity: I stepped into the bank, and the bank manager came over to visit. (We’re good friends.” I’m eating an apple. He’s eating… I couldn’t tell what. He started up a conversation… “Hey, look at the two of us… both eating in the middle of the day at the bank.”

I think, “Well, yes.” I smiled as I took another bit of my crunchy juicy apple. He popped some more of that whatever-it-was into his mouth.

Then he observed that mine was healthy food and his was sugar (junk food), which began an entire litany of the woes of eating junk food and how bad this was compared

She typed a title and just as quickly deleted it. She typed out a full paragraph and deleted that as well. She got up and walked the length of the large room with the very high ceilings she couldn’t live without. Nothing. Not a thing on her mind worth saying…

Maybe going for a walk would help. She gazed up at the stars… she stopped and stood still to listen to the traffic in the distance… no, nothing there to write about. Just random thought and no article to be found there. Finally she was back home. Dinner was the next order of business; and when that was done and dishes washed and put away, still no connected thought rose to the occasion.

She could make a beautiful meal. She could keep order in her home. She could yawn and ache for sleep. But she could not come up with even two decent sentences to string together.

“Maybe,” she thought, “I should just sit down and write.” But again, she deleted everything that found its way onto the page. Too tired. Too much in need of sleep. And worse

A man works as a gardener for several months in an affluent neighborhood. He has a beautiful smile every time he comes to work for his new employer. And, this isn’t just the “Hi, how are you smile.” This is a man who is happy and gracious the entire time he works with her, planning and laying out her new back yard.

If his ideas are turned down, he’s not offended. If something has to be changed, he does it with ease and takes it in his stride. If the monsoons interrupt his work, he is grateful for it and takes pleasure in the rain, in spite of the fact that it means some of what he’s just accomplished will have to be done to the new yard twice.

A complex patio design was conceived for him to lay stone. It was heavy work that had to be done with great care. Still, he smiled and was a happy man. What made him so joyous?

The day came to buy the plants. He, his son, and the woman employer drove together to his brother-in-law’s plant nursery. Again, same happy face as his

Laughter has always been the great equalizer in most families. No matter how fancy your pants are, or how much clout you think you possess, it it’s funny we will all laugh at your expense… Fondly… but we will… with love in our hearts for you… but still… we will laugh! And, somehow, that makes us all the same when we laugh together.

I’ve told this story several times to the bros… but tonight via chat line, Nate asked me to “tell the story about Grandpa…. you know the one.” And yes I do know. So, Nate, for you… Here it is.

We were there in Nogales visiting my folks and Dad asked if I wouldn’t mind running over to Uncle Eddie’s to pick up some whiskey Eddie had purchased for him. I said okay and Hubby and i jumped in the car and headed for Uncle Eddie’s place. When we got there, Eddie was having a glass of apple juice. The glass container from which it came was still sitting out on the counter. Uncle Eddie took out the bottle of whiskey and sit it on the counter next to