Do you know where the term “green with envy” stems from? Shakespeare is credited with the English idiom in Othello. Before he came along to make it popular, the Greeks are thought to have associated it with bile. That icky feeling in one’s stomach when envy is stirred likely gave it a nasty green color. […]
Continue Reading
When I think of my grandchildren, there is a sweet glow in my mind of happy holding-on-the-lap book reading, coloring pictures together or baking cookies. Quiet blissfulness. Togetherness. And so ridiculously unreal. When my husband thinks of our three youngest grandsons, something comes over him. He becomes the terrible and mighty Foota-eat-a-saurus. What might that […]
Continue Reading
My six-year-old and three-year-old grandsons have never even seen Star Wars, but the way they go at it, you’d never know. They grunt and shout in victory and defeat. It is a run-for-your-life war to the finish. Apparently, it only takes a few years of life to figure out someone gets to be the greatest. […]
Continue Reading
“Do you know Gawd?” Arched back, hands on hips, lips puckered, the question comes from knee high, completely out of the blue. I look down at his upturned face. A light saber pulsates in his hand with Darth Vader’s ragged breathing. He’s only three, but he pronounces Gawd like the great-grandfather he never knew. […]
Continue Reading
“We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” Numbers 13:33 (ESV) It’s impossible to read about the Israelites’ long exodus from Egypt without being convicted of similar acts and attitudes of anemic faith in my own daily life. They grumbled. They worried and fretted. They blamed. They rebelled. Sounds like someone […]
Continue Reading
My acquisition of the Italian language really doesn’t reflect the amazing teacher I had in Florence, Italy, or the excellence of her skills. Like Michaelangelo she chipped away, always confident that deep within me something stunningly amazing would come forth. I did stun quite often actually, like whenever I opened my mouth. The amazing part […]
Continue Reading
(This post may have a familiar ring to it. You may have read it on the first go around Feb. 14, 2017, but it’s especially appropriate for a revisit before Valentine’s Day sneaks up on you.) I was twenty. So was he. We didn’t go through a lot of wrenching machinations about if we […]
Continue Reading
Featured recently at Just18Summers.com “It was a Facetime call. I held it up and saw some of the cutest little faces looking at me. “Grandma!” My five-year-old grandson and his three-year-old brother exclaimed. “Grandma, where are you?” A frown drew the older grandson’s brows together…” Read Article Here
Continue Reading
“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” –Bill Clinton. Every time my husband and I round a particular corner, political signs crop into our sight like spring tulips. The lawn in front of the red brick ranch house is so full of signs I can’t quite read them all before they […]
Continue Reading
My husband has a carpenter’s chalk line. He rolls it out, squints down its straight line and lifts it slightly between thick fingers, then lets it snap. It leaves a distinct chalk line marking what he needs cut, not cut, lined up or whatever. The mark itself will eventually fade or be covered up, but […]
Continue Reading