My grandmother, Mimi, loves to tell stories. Like age rings in a tree, they
are circular, ever enlarging. She will start a story, then veer off into
another story, and then another, and an hour later, you realize you'd never
heard the end of the story she'd originally been telling. If I didn't pay
close attention, maybe eight tales would entwine me until I was on overload. I
learned to say, "But Read More...
It is a long-time dream of mine to tell stories. I have a large, sprawling,
involved, and wonderful family, so big books, long series, and lots of
characters with multi-facets and issues are something I enjoy writing.
But one thing I like to try my hand at are smaller works, anthologies, short
stories and
articles, that people often assume are easier because they are, after all,
short. One has only to read any Read More...
I don't do change well. I like stability and loyalty, avoid dysfunction and
distraction. If I were a tree, I guess I'd be some kind of Japanese bonsai,
slow-growing, evergreen. I've always dreamed of having a bonsai collection. They
are lovely plants in many variations, but I prefer the ones that look like small
juniper trees. The angled, stretched-out branches always look so peaceful.
Having caught the tail end of Read More...
Christmas is a time for happy memories. I have a lot of memories from
different Christmases, most of them wonderful. My grandmother loved all the
holidays. She always wanted decorations out for every occasion. For
Christmas, Mimi had little red velvet reindeer she'd put on her fireplace
mantel. There would be a turkey for dinner, homemade chocolate chip cookies,
and a chocolate chip cake. I've tried many times unsuccessfully to make the
chocolate Read More...
What I love best about the Thanksgiving season is that you get to do a lot of
hanging out with family and friends. My holiday season starts the day after
Halloween. On November 1, I want my boys to drag the tree from its box and put
it in its stand. Then I let the kids put the decorations up. Hopefully by now
I'm done with a lot of my Christmas shopping, because then Read More...
Thankfully one of the few times I can remember being hungry was when my mother
used to make noodles and pork chops. Mom didn't use a strainer to drain her
noodles. She would stand at the sink, clap a lid on the pot, leaving just a
crack for the steaming water to pour out. Often some noodles rushed from the
pot along with the water to a sad ending in the drain, and I Read More...
Twenty-one years ago my boyfriend and I returned from a midnight movie to hear
scream-yelps coming from under my apartment porch. You can't believe that a
frightened puppy can scream, but this stray did as it tried to elude the woman
who was trying to catch him.
I took the brown and white puppy in, much to my boyfriend's dismay. I already
had a collie that had lived with me in Read More...
I remember when my grandmother, who loved books beyond anything and
particularly romance novels, lost her sight to macular degeneration.
She had haunted bookstores, come to visit me when certain authors were in town,
and rarely bought books used unless I took her to my friends' used bookstores.
Mimi
told me, "I just want to be able to read."
The winters where she is in eastern Tennessee can be long for an elderly
person, so Read More...
Sometimes the accidental Great Adventure influences what we know of life. One
of my adventures occurred in college. I was a Resident Assistant of a
dormitory floor, with around twenty-six girls under my auspices. Most of them
were younger than me by a year, and I saw my role as more of a listening ear
than as a disciplinarian.
One night sometime after curfew, there was a knock on my door. The girls had Read More...
I'm impatient! I always want my favorite authors to have another book out as
fast as possible! Sometimes I have to wait, and that's very hard for an
impatient person. I have a Thomas Kincaid five hundred piece puzzle that's
thwarting my patience right now, but I'm determined that Mr. Kincaid will not
defeat me with his beautiful use of light and shadow that tricks the eye. I
would eat dessert Read More...
Recently I went to dinner with some mothers from my son's tenth grade class.
One of the dads had become paralyzed from the neck down, basically, all of a
sudden. The odd thing was that the dad had been keeping score at the high
school basketball game the night before, and all seemed well. He never
complained of feeling bad. Knowing that our friend has a lot on her hands
juggling rehabilitation, her children Read More...
Leonard Light
