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Back in Time
Have you ever wished to go back in time? Maybe you want to hug someone you’ve lost or ask them something important. Maybe you would like to reassure your younger self or snuggle your little child who is now grown. At times like this, you might wish for time travel. I’ve traveled through time and space; it’s always been unexpected and it’s always been brief. But I’ve been there, in the past. Once it happened when I was walking in Austin, Texas with my son and his family. It was short-sleeved weather in spring. I pushed the stroller on a trail along Lady Bird Lake. It’s really part of a…
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Wholehearted
I step outside with my husband and our 2-½ year old granddaughter. It’s a chilly spring evening and we want to release some wiggles before bedtime. I’ve watched the spring color begin at the ground and move up. The grass turned first, then the smaller trees sprouted green buds or pink and white blossoms. The 60’ trees are still bare. Next month green will be everywhere. But tonight the earth is still in transition. We walk down the stairs to the patio and draw a hopscotch grid with chalk. We take turns hopping. The game transports me to a schoolyard in Oklahoma, where I’m wearing PF flyers and knee socks.…
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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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Holes in the Sky
I listen to my son’s story of feeling his grandma near. He was alone. He was struggling with the language and culture in a foreign country. It was a difficult time for our family. She had been gone for 3 years. It’s not the first time I’ve heard the story. Hearing it still makes me cry. He shared the story at a family gathering last month, our first since her funeral. We’ve been together in small groups, but for various reasons, it’s been 18 years since our last family reunion. After eating one of my mom’s signature desserts, 34 of us sit close. We swap anecdotes, some funny, some poignant,…
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Preface
I read some of Jen Hatmaker’s words last summer. “Sometimes you can connect a few dots and discover a pretty clear path toward vibrancy and possibility.” I thought about the dots that connect for me. My shelves are full of books I read as a child. I keep a list of books I’ve read beginning in high school. Once near the end of a book — Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety — I had a sense of deja vu. I checked my list and saw I had read the book 14 years earlier. As a young mom, I’d slip into a book during stolen moments, promising myself I’d go to…
