I got mail from Iowa this week. When I opened it, this picture fell out, with a note from a friend of my parents. Martha reads the blog. She loves the posts about family, so last week was a good one for her. She has a lot of memories of the bird in the pocket. I… Continue reading The Bird Returns
Category: Family
Uncle Bird
My father always had a bird in his pocket. No, of course not really. What a mess that would be. Still, all my life, I remember children running up to him and with arms over their heads, waiting to be swooped up onto his hip, and shrieking to see the bird. In the last years… Continue reading Uncle Bird
In Groups of Three
We were three stair-steps growing up, cousins each a year apart, Gina-Carol-Carla. There were a lot of cousins — thirty-two on my mom’s side — but we were special somehow. Close enough in age and without major personality conflicts, I think. Our mothers mostly indulged us; cousins were safe friends. Sometimes we were all together,… Continue reading In Groups of Three
Ten Days
My husband has been in the hospital for ten days. He went in through ER with an infection in his leg. We were not expecting this at all, let alone for things to last this long. We don't know when he will come home. The boys ask me every day, and I am afraid to… Continue reading Ten Days
These Nights
These are the nights I don’t tell you about. These are the nights that I think maybe, for real, we’re not going to make it. That maybe there was a reason we didn’t get pregnant, and that reason was my total unfitness to be a mother. These are the nights when I know for sure… Continue reading These Nights