In a great green room there was a telephone… Goodbye, room. It’s a good thing that teenagers are mostly obnoxious because putting up with obnoxious stuff day after day lessens the grief and pain when they move out. It’s a good thing Kansas flung 100 degree + weather at us this week…and that packing up the dregs
I don’t remember the first big goodbye of my life. This is what my dad looked like when he decided it was important for the five of us–my mom and dad, my older sister and baby sister and me–to move to Ethiopia and help with the rebuilding effort after World War II. Maybe it was
Sometimes life feels so step step step and rich with plans and goals and paths toward those goals. Sometimes it’s a tumble-bumble swirl and I stumble along awash in feelings and hardly able to think. Hardly knowing what to think. In short, it’s a mess. That…umm…might just be how I feel right now. But I often say to my
What’s in a move, anyway? One of my author friends, who is sorting her office, points out that after the obvious things are put here and there, what’s left could be called The Dregs. If there was an obvious place for the dregs…for this doo-dad or that file or the piece of paper over there…the
We humans seem to like and need hooks to hang our brains on. Since moving to Kansas nine years ago, I’ve found out what people in other states think about Kansas, for instance, and it mostly has to do with The Wizard of Oz although a surprising number of people comment on Kansas as being such
On that complicated and scary ride from the savannah up into the mountains, there was one spot that was scarier than scary, and I can still remember the nightmare I had about it when I was about nine years old. What should be scary about a road, you ask? Well, the Jeep broke down regularly,
Only when I travel do I tend to remember the role that clever, well-planned, well-designed infrastructure plays in getting us the things that matter most in shaping the good life: food, water, work, stories, and the like. Traveling in Ethiopia often has the zing of adventure. I’m thinking today of my brother and good friends who are
My grandma’s grandma was a little girl when her family set out on the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon. Like a lot of people, I’ve long been fascinated by my ancestors’ experiences, and when I wrote I’m Sorry, Almira Ann, I wove in a true story from that trip. Seems when the wagons creaked to a
I didn’t expect to grieve when I left Kansas. Kansas was fine. I like Kansas. We moved there to live close to Leonard’s parents at the end of their lives–and then we moved to Lawrence to add some hands into the pot for Jonathan and Hiwot while they were juggling classes at KU with the leapings and cavortings of
So many different patterns ripple through families. In mine? Reading, obviously. A love of books. A sharing of books. But also…gardens. Maji, Ethiopia had a year-round growing season, and my dad was forever coaxing my mom to cook what burst out of the earth there, introducing us to things like kohlrabi and artichokes and water cress. We four sisters tagged
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