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Lights Along the Path
I sit on my front porch step, the brick still warm even though the sun is long gone. Oklahoma nights are neither cool nor quiet. I listen to the soundtrack of summer: cicadas (locusts) perform loud enough to drown out my reverie and then recede into the background. I am 16-years-old. I feel nostalgic and romantic as I watch the moonlight filter through the branches of the oak tree. My future husband is somewhere under this moon, I think. I picture my future: engaged, married, my first baby. My daydreams get me no further than being married with a couple of little kids. In my actual life, once I had…
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First Responders: Lifelong Friends
My friend and I are 7 years old. We are at my house and we’re trying to make sense of a terrible fact. Her little brother rides his bike out of the driveway. He is hit by a garbage truck. One moment he is here. The next he is gone. Her house is full of family but is strangely empty too. We never figure it out, but we try, together. Through the years we write letters. Our families have been close since she moved to Oklahoma at age 5. Through moves and adolescence, our friendship ebbs and flows. It’s always there. My other friend and I are 10 years old.…
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Vulnerability and Victory in 7 million steps
The alarm went off at 5:15am. I wanted to hit the snooze button and snuggle deeper under the covers. But I didn’t. My husband was stirring, plus our friends would be in our driveway in 15 minutes. Every Friday (rain or shine, snow or ice) for more than 2 years my husband and I threw on tennis shoes and sweatshirts and met Tylee and Larence Searle for a 5-mile walk. In the stillness of all those mornings before the sun rose, we walked over 7 million steps or 28 million if you combine the 4 of us. It started as a way to exercise and quickly morphed into sacred time.…
