I still call my dad most every morning. While I’m driving to work, he’s slowly but surely making his way to breakfast in the retirement facility where Dad and Mom now live. I sometimes have difficulty communicating on the phone with Dad since his hearing is not what it used to be. (Dad just turned …
I grew up in Tornado Alley. Tornadoes were more of an event I enjoyed than a threat I feared, so invincible did I think I was as a child and teenager. As we gathered in the Shively’s storm shelter with other neighbors, I rather enjoyed the social gathering and naively hoped the twister would somehow …
“What are you doing, Dad?” my son asked when he called me on his cell phone. I was sitting on our back patio, admiring the work I’d done, having just planted the first third of my garden with the non-genetically modified seeds I had oh-so carefully selected. I wanted to come as close as I …
Will there be fences in heaven? That’s another way of asking, will your bothersome neighbor’s heavenly mansion be next to yours? Before you petition heaven’s city council for a privacy fence or request that your bad neighbor be confined to the eternal promised land’s back forty, make sure you yourself aren’t unwittingly the neighbor from …
Growing up, my mother was like a lighthouse to me: Her light was always on, a beacon guiding me through the daily adventures and the bumps and bruises of childhood and adolescence. At the end of the day, she was always there, welcoming me to the safe harbor that was my home. Years later, when …