“Memory is the scribe of the soul.”
– Aristotle
My mother could not sing, never hit one right note, never had any musical training whatsoever. But still, she sang with all of her heart and soul and with any improvised microphone laying around within reach. A spatula, a large spoon, a baton, a borrowed cane. It didn’t matter. She just needed a prop for…
Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. J. Richard Lessor, author, social worker (often attributed to Henry David Thoreau) There I am in my five-year-old glory, having already captured…
If you’re a man in the early 1970s with a baby blue VW bus, you’re going places. If that baby blue VW bus has calico curtains with gingham trim, you’re going in style (or you have a wife who thinks it’s stylish). If the back of that blue van is covered in stickers from camping…
In 2003, I traveled to South Africa with my uncle and a group from his church to volunteer at a small children’s mission called the “Door of Hope.” The mission was a safe haven for infants who might otherwise be abandoned. The country was in the grips of the HIV crisis and the social support…
One of my mom’s favorite sayings was “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.” My family’s history is littered with beautiful souls whose lives were robbed of breaths but rendered bountiful in breathless moments. This hug is one of those moments. This…
The pursuit of writing requires having the words to explain unexplainable emotions and circumstances. There are times when the circumstance is so heavy that words fail me. Remembrance around 9/11 is one of those occasions. Finding words to remember a friend is another. Still, so many words come to mind from this picture. This is…
