Out of the Dark Mary Theresa was tired. Tired of feeling out of control; tired of feeling lost. She went out to the porch of her house on the lake and stared at the dark night. She couldn’t help but wonder why she had been put on this earth, particularly now that she was out…
Category: Stories
Happy Birthday Eve, Brother Sam!
Tomorrow is my brother Sam’s birthday and I’ll just like to give him a shout out from CA to Texas or Ohio or Tennessee, wherever he may be tonight. My little brother is five years my junior and he has a musical streak that surpasses that of most mortal beings. He started pounding on a…
An Unexpected Request Today
Of the 1367 posts that I have written for this blog, the one entitled, “My Sister’s Eulogy Complete with a Few Jokes,” consistently gets the most hits. And today, I had a first. A woman wrote in the comment section of my blog that she had stumbled upon the eulogy for my sister in a…
Reflections on Living, Dying and Our Little Dog, Sammie
This has been a strange day indeed. We went to the vet this morning with our Scottish terrier, Sammie, only to get the diagnosis we feared: a cancerous mass in her belly and another on her lung. No pain now, but pain would be coming very soon. I was prepared to allow the vet to…
A Reprieve from Near Death
A few years back, my husband and I were traveling from California to Texas, and I was pulling a 1958 Buick on a trailer behind our 15-passenger Ford Van. This was my husband’s idea of love at first sight – that ’58 Buick – a car from his birth year that he hoped to restore…
Novel Writing, Disappointments and Baby Steps
For those of you who don’t know, I am working on a novel. This is my second serious attempt at long fiction; the first completed manuscript is lying in the bottom of my desk drawer after not finding a home among publishers. The first is memoir turned fiction and is based partly on real-life events…
Lessons from Two Masters
I just finished helping a student finish his 10 page term paper on how Edith Wharton’s and Tennessee Williams’ lives inspired Ethan Frome and The Glass Menagerie. The truth is that both of their lives are right there on those pages, disguised as other people dealing with problems of guilt, abandonment, thwarted dreams and societal…
Childhood Days of Fabric Stores and Seamstresses
Anyone who knows me knows that I am not much of a shopper. I hate going into clothing stores and going through the racks to determine yet again that I am a hard size to fit. The fashion industry certainly doesn’t use the under 5 foot tall woman as the model for their clothes and…
Happy Birthday, Sweet Sarah
My beautiful firstborn baby is turning 33 tomorrow and I thought I would share a few pictures over the years. Here are just a few: …
A Few of My Favorite Things about My Mother
I was thinking about my mother today and the secret things I loved about her. For example, I loved her smell, which was a combination of Oleg Cassini perfume, vo5 hair conditioner, and CoverGirl face powder. Also, I loved her “look.” She always wore slacks, a top, and a jacket no matter if it were…
20 Minutes a Day 