We Can’t Go Back in Time
Mary Oliver, in her book Thirst, captures an image that stays with me, and reminds me that every moment has the potential to be life changing, and we cannot get those moments back once they have passed.  How often have we moved through time unaware, and only in the looking back over our day do we see how Grace left her mark in a chance meeting, in a split decision that could have ended differently, in a moment that had we been looking, we would have been knocked over by the power of Grace breezing through our lives, filling us with joy.  We rush from place to place with a list in our heads, clouding out any visions we have of peace and calm.  In her poem, Mary captures an early mornin

I write…
I write…. I write from the old rust colored chair in the corner of my bedroom by the window, where I can watch the sun move over the tops of houses and trees and the where the steam rises from my tea cup like morning prayers. I write in a leather bound journal that houses a new notebook each time I scribble final words on the last page. I write on my computer with thoughts flowing faster than my fingers can type, but I like the sound of my fingertips softly tapping the keys, changing single letters into words that create an artistic design, flowing easily from one idea to the next, eventually creating art to share. I write from my heart the

The Sunday Routine
The Sunday Routine The board game is at least fifty years old.  And each time I open it, I remember Grandma:  her cookies, her giggle when she won at cards, her screwdriver drinks, the Broncos, and Scrabble. My grandmother Mildred was a fixture at our house every Sunday when I was growing up.  After church, we would pick her up from her apartment close to downtown Ft. Collins and bring her home.  If my dad cooked, it was on Sunday morning when he prepared scrambled eggs and Jimmy Dean sausage to go with mom’s homemade cinnamon rolls.  My mother would begin to make a large batch of cookies, or put a pot roast in for dinner.  Breakfast was a time for sharing our stori

Little Girl Giggles
My oldest daughter is working on a Barbie project in her sophomore year of college. She has to make Barbie more realistic.  In an effort to help her, I went looking for old doll clothes that might fit a re-sized Barbie.  When I opened boxes and baskets of doll clothes, voices of little girls filled the air and surrounded me with their joy and laughter.  My three daughters spent countless days playing house and dressing up dolls for tea parties.  Many a time I was a guest in the restaurant with the doll Lizzie and her friends as my companions.  Some of the doll clothes are actually clothes that my own girls wore: a green bathing suit with bows of red and yellow and blue, and a pumpki

Cleaning the Bookshelves…Cleaning my Soul
It seems hard to believe that as much as I love books, and enjoy having them throughout my house, my husband loves them more than me. This can be difficult at times, because there is rarely a book that is deemed unworthy of sitting on our bookshelves. I can pick out twenty in a heartbeat, and when my husband sees the pile I plan on taking to the used book store, half of them always end up back in our library, where some shelves are now two deep with novels and non-fiction books that are must reads, and poetry books whose words are balm for a busy life. I definitely wouldn’t win any decorating awards for spacious shelves with lots of knick knacks and a few token books that are just for