finding her grave in Michigan in 2019 (findagrave.com) My maternal grandma was blind from glaucoma and deaf by the age of fifty. I met her a few times, but in those days we didn’t travel much, so the main thing I remember is a visit she made from her retirement home in Michigan to our …
Continue reading Nostalgia – My Maternal Grandma (1874-1958)
Some things from my boxes I can't throw away. Yet. I was doing fine with my purge until the final box labeled jobs/MS/PhD. In other words, my nursing career and advanced degrees in nursing. As I paged through the piles of papers I had saved, every memory came springing back. piles Job application letters, letters …
Terri Lee (worth a lot now online!) and Baby (who cries) George Burns once said, "You know you're getting old when you stoop down to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there." This idea has been part of my life since late last fall when I developed hip …
When I was born, he told the neighbors, "It's another girl." He was eleven and already had three sisters. When I was five, I rode on his handlebars to kindergarten. We crossed over a brook. I was the only kid in kindergarten that knew that water was H20. Then my brother left for college. When …
I purged my closet of twenty-seven items. Does this “first line” grab your attention? Do you want to know more? Do you wonder if there’s a correlation between these two events? Is this something you even care to read about? The goal for first lines is to keep the reader reading. Read the first lines …
I'm having a miniature identity crisis and desperately need the help of a few of you readers. I was invited last week to a meet and greet on the block of my Arizona home. The hostess said we could bring a small something to share or not. I certainly didn't want to be not only …
If you've never taken a class on writing about your own life, you are missing out on some fun stuff. Yes, some material from your life may be painful to write, but a lot of things are fun to recollect. To help you remember, writing teachers come to class armed with "prompts" to jog your …
"If Darlene can do it, surely I can," I told myself last week. I was recalling a time I dropped in at my church to find a pair of legs peeking out from under an open lower cabinet door in the kitchen. I came closer and saw our octogenarian, unofficial, in-charge-of-church-kitchen woman halfway under the …
"What are you trying to prove?" my friend asked in a text. I had just sent her a photo of me stuck in my closet. I'd been trying to put a new recliner together and had to get behind it. Since it was somewhat heavy, I shimmied myself behind it into the closet. To see …
“Mom, look what I found,” Kathleen said as she pulled a slip of paper from her shiny fuchsia purse. “A two-for-one Clairol coupon.” That Friday in July had started out okay. Despite my brother facing death from pancreatic cancer in Grand Rapids and the hundred-degree weather in Chicago, I was determined to be upbeat as …
Write Along with Me 