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Showing posts from August, 2009

Yell With The Crowd

Mr. Shores knew how to coach a winning volleyball team. He wasn't particularly friendly or nice, but he was good. He was competitive. He meant to win and he drove us hard to achieve that goal. Most of us were eleven years old; a few had already turned twelve. We were in the sixth grade. I'd barely made the team, and he only put me into the game after we had a significant lead. I played every game though because the other girls on the team were that good. I didn't mind the bench. I was never alone on it. There were four of us who bench-sat until he was confident that we could do no harm regardless of how many balls we let sail past us. I loved playing volleyball and was thrilled to have made the "A" team even if it was to primarily watch from the sidelines. It's fun to be part of a winning team regardless of how a small a part you play. In this mode, I became adept at cheering my team on to its many victories that year. This was "back in the day" when

The Trouble With A Praying Mother

Patty sauntered into the kitchen. Her mother was at the stove stirring something in a huge pot that smelled heavenly. "Mmmm! That smells great! What is it?" Patty asked as she tried to get a peak. "Never you mind. It's not for us anyway. How was school?" Her mother asked, blocking Patty's view of the source of her olfactory delight. Patty shrugged her shoulders, giving up on viewing the contents of the pot and walked over to the icebox - it was an icebox, not a refrigerator - a box that held large blocks of ice that had been delivered by, who else? The iceman. The year was 1942. Patty was thirteen. She'd been born in October, 1929 - four days before Black Thursday. She knew nothing of affluence. No one did in those days, which made being poor, if not easier than it is today, at least more tolerable. Of course, universal poverty isn't insulation against covetousness. There just aren't so many covetees sitting across the aisle in history c

Back At It

My apologies to my massive fan-base for my silence the past few weeks. I've opened this page several times in an attempt to blog, but the result has been . . . well, nothing - nothing at all. I think I might have inserted a title at one point, but then no words came to fill the void below the title. It's been a busy year within my family: both of my children got married, one of them also graduated from college, both of them moved with their new spouses, one of them to a new city; but this past month has been especially full. Of late, I've found myself in conversations with people, knowing that it's mine turn to say something, willing myself to come up with words - any words to fill the empty air between us as my co-conversant stares at me in expectation, but my brain is blank. Nada. Zip. Zilcho. Zero. Null. Thus my silence on the written page. There was simply nothing there. In this brain-dead state, I despaired of ever writing again. What had I been thinking anyway? Th