One evening while my daughter Tammie and I were returning to our vacation cottage after an outing I noticed that although the sun had not set, there were long, dusky shadows prematurely darkening the coulees. I said, “Night comes early to a shadowed valley.”
Tammie laughed and said, “That sounds like a pantoum topic.”
I knew she was right! The next day I sat down and wrote one about life in a coulee. Continue reading
A warm, summer breeze ruffled our hair, but the sun burned our skin. Since we were half-way up the side of a bluff, I reasoned that the sun was hotter than usual because we were closer to it than when on flat land. My daughter Tammie and I had reached the middle of the vineyard. I stopped and turned to look at the grand view. I could see bluffs on the other side of the Mississippi, but they were shrouded by a curtain of blue haze. Closer, to the left, front and right of us, I counted three other tall, tree-covered bluffs. The coulee below was connected to a network of other valleys that curved around the base of each bluff.
A short way below us, bunkered into the bluff side and surrounded by these beautiful rows of grapevines, was our vacation cottage. I could see the small lawn, the electric grill, red table and chairs arranged by the back door. Greg, the owner of the property, had told us that the grapevines on the fence near the cottage were table grapes. He suggested, “You’re welcome to pick and eat them.” Next to the fence was a chiminea with dry wood stacked inside, waiting to be used.
I smiled to myself, remembering a conversation that I’d had with someone before coming here. When I told her about this place, she’d exclaimed, “Where does a person find a place like this?” It made me realize that an unusual vacation spot was truly a treasure. My daughter and I had been very fortunate to come upon it while ‘mining’ the internet one night. Continue reading
A streak of lightning zig-zagged from one end of the sky to the other end. I counted, “One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three.” A loud boom of thunder rattled our cottage.
My daughter Tammie said, “The storm is three miles from here.” Another streak of lighting was followed by thunder two seconds later.
“I said, “The thunder sounds like it bounces back and forth between all the bluffs around us like a ball in a pin-ball machine.”
While a thunderstorm would ruin some people’s vacation, I went to the cottage hoping that we would have a storm during our stay. It was beautiful and my daughter and I enjoyed it very much!
My daughter and I had decided to spend our vacation in a cottage surrounded by a vineyard on the side of a bluff in the driftless area of Wisconsin when we missed the enrollment date for a pilgrimage to Ireland. Untouched by the last glacier that had scoured most of Wisconsin flat, tall bluffs and deep coulees makes the driftless area seem like a beautiful foreign country. Continue reading
My daughter was on her way out the back door when she paused to say, “You said you wanted to see a play at Spring Green while on vacation, so I bought tickets for us. We’re going to see Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.”
Genuinely pleased, I said, “Oh good! What night are we going?”
Nonchalantly, Tammie said, “The first day of our vacation. We’ll have to leave the cottage right after we arrive to get there on time.”
Hating to be rushed, especially while on vacation, I asked, “Wasn’t there another night that we could go to that play?”
Shaking her head, my daughter said, “No. The only day I could get tickets during our vacation week, was that night. Don’t worry. It’ll all work out.” Continue reading
I peeked into the children’s bedroom before sitting down on the sofa next to my husband, Arnie. I said, “The girls went to sleep quickly tonight. Going for that long walk with me this afternoon in the cool, brisk air tired them out.”
Arnie said, “The weather today was more like it should be at the end of September. There was a chill of fall in the air and it’s only the beginning of August!”
I shrugged. “In a few days it’ll probably be as warm as July. Anyway, school will be starting in a few weeks.”
“That reminds me, did you call the bus company?” my husband wondered. “The lady at the kindergarten orientation meeting seemed to think Tammie would need to ride on a bus for the handicapped.”
I rolled my eyes before answering, “I called about getting her enrolled on the bus for handicapped children and was yelled at. The man I talked to was very indignant. I don’t know what his problem was. He seemed to think I was asking for something out of the ordinary or unnecessary. I tried explaining to him the lady at the kindergarten orientation suggested that I call…he just yelled at me in a most unprofessional manner! I guess he was having a bad day.” Continue reading
Shoving my laundry, first into a shopping bag, then that bag into my luggage, I looked around and said, “I think I’ve packed everything that I brought with me.”
My daughter Tammie laughed, “Mom, you always forget something or another.”
Rolling my eyes, I admitted, “That’s true.” Every time I visit my daughter for a weekend, I invariably end up forgetting to take something home. Once I left behind my curling iron and ended up buying a new one.
After one last inspection of my daughter’s apartment, I zipped the luggage shut and followed her to the door. Tammie said, “Oh, by the way, have you heard from the pilgrimage headquarters yet?” Continue reading
Niki said, “Mom, would you mind having Ben, Luke and Jake stay with you the week that I’ll be working at the girl’s camp?”
Looking up from the recipe book my daughter had handed me a few moments earlier, I said, “Sure, but won’t they feel left out, not being able to go camping, too? Where will Jon, Gemma and Blaise be that week?”
Each summer the church my daughter attends holds two weeks of camp. The first week is for the boys in the parish who are ten years old or older. Girls aged ten and up attend the following week. At ages fifteen and eleven, Jon and Ben are eligible. Anne and Claire may participate since they are sixteen and twelve years old.
Shrugging, Niki said, “I’m going to keep the two little ones with me. Jon will spend the week with his friend Noah. That leaves the three younger boys. They know that when they are old enough they’ll be able to go to camp, too.” Continue reading
A ray of morning sunshine slanted down from the window on the stairway landing. Without thinking, I stepped into the beam, like a super star steps into a spotlight on stage. Closing my eyes, I smiled. It felt right and good to be there.
I may have stood in this exact spot on an April morning sixty years ago, when I was five. Back then I would have been listening to Mom talking to Daddy in the kitchen and enjoying the smell of fresh bread baking. I would have listened to my sister practicing her clarinet in her room, knowing that my brother was down the hall tinkering with a mechanical gadget in his room.
Today’s new, yet familiar, sunlight opened a floodgate of memories. Memories made more poignant by the job that lay before me, clearing out my childhood home to prepare for a new family to move in. Continue reading
Damp, gray tree trunks stood out in stark contrast to the brown, winter-dead lawn. The bleakness of the cloudless spring day made me sigh wearily. Rolling to a stop at the end of the driveway, I looked both ways to check for cars before pulling out onto the road, thinking, “Early spring is depressing. Everything bad that has ever happened to me…has happened at this time of the year!”
Recurrent clinical depression had plagued my early years. Flare-ups happened more often in the spring. Doing a mental check-up, I questioned, “Is this just a down day, or the start of my going off track?” Shaking my head, I thought about Christy, my first baby who was born in early February and died two months later. My Mom and Dad both died in the springtime. Then nine years ago my husband Arnie died unexpectedly on the anniversary of Christy’s death. He was only 56 years old.
Last April my 42 year-old son-in-law died when a deer crashed through the windshield of his van as he was driving my daughter to the hospital to have their eighth child. Never expecting to share widowhood experiences with my daughter so early in her life, I’m still reeling from the randomness of this horrible loss. Niki and Mike’s children are all two years apart, newborn to age fifteen. At least when Arnie died, our children were grown and on their own. Continue reading
I followed my fellow pilgrims off the bus and joined those already standing in a circle around Juan, the owner of Mater Dei Tours. Holding a pole topped with a blue flag showing the tour company logo, he said, “Here, before you is the Church of the Nativity. This is the place where it is believed that Jesus was born.”
All of my life, I had read about Bethlehem in Israel, never guessing that I’d actually travel there some day. Yet here I was with my travel companion daughter, Tammie, far from our Wisconsin home in the United States. Walking toward the church entrance, I glanced up at the gray sky overhead. A chill winter wind blew through the courtyard and I remembered a line from the Bible, “That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep.” Burying my hands in my jacket pocket, I thought, “Even in the subtropics, it gets cold during winter.” Continue reading
Life Lines 