At least we weren’t home when it happened. Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news. It’s bad news because we had to cancel most of the week-long trip we had planned. We were out of town, on our way to visit our daughter and celebrate her birthday with her, when we got the phone call telling us a tree had fallen on our house, tearing a hole in the roof. We did a U-turn on the interstate, returned our rental car, [...]
I’ve just crossed a few things off my bucket list, one of which was to actually watch the movie, The Bucket List. I watched it on the plane coming home from Hawaii. A Hawaiian vacation has been on my husband’s and my bucket list for a long time, and we finally planned and booked it this year. So that was the major item we just crossed off our list. Our top priority in Hawaii was visiting Pearl Harbor and the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial. It feels [...]
My husband and I have a ritual we follow whenever we set out on a road trip. As we’re pulling out of the driveway – or hotel parking lot – he calls out, “Wagons…” and I respond, “Ho!” We note the time, and for the rest of the day we have a friendly competition as we each try to be the first to announce, “We’ve been on the road an hour.” Or three. Or nine. After the first few hours, it’s easy to lose track. [...]
We were just south of Chattanooga when we stopped at a rest stop for a quick break. We had been watching dark clouds forming around us, and saw several thick, jagged lightning bolts in the distance. It started to drizzle just as we were walking into the rest stop, and in a few minutes the drizzle had grown to a torrential downpour, with wind to match. The staff at the rest stop locked the door, and herded us all to a sheltered hallway, then pulled [...]
Monday, January 28, 1986. Although it was more than 37 years ago, I remember the day clearly. We were still living in the Chicago area then, and I was five months into my new career as a stay-at-home mom. It was the day after our beloved Chicago Bears won the Super Bowl, and I was still in a festive mood, with the television tuned to all the celebrations going on in Chicago. It was an historic day for another reason, too, although not the way [...]
“So—Which place that you visited was your favorite?” I was expecting – and dreading – that question once my husband and I returned from our vacation in Italy. The only accurate and appropriate answer I could give would be the cliché response: “That’s like asking me which child is my favorite,” especially if my children numbered more than a dozen, instead of just two. I was planning to go on a pilgrimage to Italy with my church a number of years ago, but because of [...]
We just passed the one-year anniversary of my husband’s heart attack. It’s not something we went out to celebrate, but we did take notice and reflect. In some ways, it feels like it’s been much longer than a year, but in other ways, it feels more like, “One year? Already?” In many ways, he’s back to how he was before having a heart attack. In other ways, it’s changed both our lives. After his surgery, his doctors warned him it would be a full year [...]
We had a visit last week from some out-of-state friends. We didn’t know ahead of time exactly when they would be here, or how long they’d be able to stay, because they were taking a road trip from Chicago and visiting some other relatives and places along the way. But we had done a grocery run anticipating company, and I baked some cookies and sourdough bread ahead of their arrival. The rest, we played by ear. We have known this couple forever – two of [...]
After a mid-December trip to California to spend a few days with our daughter as she recovered from surgery, we were home packing our bags again, this time for a trip to Minnesota – with an overnight stop in Chicago – to spend Christmas with our son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren. The night before we were scheduled to leave, however, we decided to cancel our trip. Although we had already dug through our closets for any cold-weather clothing we still owned – in anticipation of [...]
It was my husband’s 50th high school reunion, but we made it a week filled with reunions, from high school classmates and college buddies to other friends and family members we haven’t seen in quite a while. The high school reunion was the main reason for our trip to Chicago. But our first visit when we got into town was with friends we’ve known for well over fifty years. In our younger days, we used to go camping together, often with little more than a [...]