A long-distance goodbye
My father-in-law passed away last week. When it was clear he wouldn’t be with us much longer, my husband drove to Chicago to be with him during those last few days. Before he left, we made the agonizing decision for me to stay home. Actually, making the decision wasn’t the agonizing part; accepting it was. In earlier times – meaning any time before the pandemic – we’d have been traveling back and forth to Chicago regularly, especially as my father-in-law’s [...]
Right Name, Wrong Story
I was well into the book for my next book club meeting when I saw an email from the leader of our group. She always keeps us up to date, sending out reminders of upcoming meetings and including in each email a list of the books we’ve got scheduled for the next few months, and a comment about the book we’re currently reading. In this email, her note said it was “a very interesting book, about an eight-year-old girl who [...]
Doctor’s Orders
I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday. Nothing’s wrong, and the doctor gave me an “All clear” report, along with the standard advice to come back in a year, or earlier if something comes up in between now and then. I’ve always stayed up to date with my annual check-ups, and any other medical appointments that are warranted on a regular or occasional basis. More and more often, I seem to be hearing, “At your age, you should probably think [...]
If you could go back….
If you could go back in time and change one event in history, what would it be? That question – or something similar – is the basis for countless movies, television shows, philosophical discussions, and theories about the space-time continuum. It was also the question at an online Table Topics contest I recently attended. In a Toastmasters Table Topics competition, contestants are asked a question – generally an open-ended, there’s-no-wrong-answer question. They have to respond immediately, and speak for one [...]
A Champion for Change
“Champions for Change” is the name of the feature, and I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was when I saw one of the champions being showcased – a young man named Lual Mayen. He was born as his family was fleeing South Sudan, and has lived more than 22 years in a refugee camp in northern Uganda. The first time he ever saw a computer was in 2007 during a refugee registration, and after he told his [...]
Where were you that day?
If you’re old enough to remember it, I don’t need to say any more than that for you to know what I’m talking about. Yesterday, on the anniversary of what we now simply refer to as 9/11, everyone remembered exactly where they were, what they were doing, and how they found out about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Most of us remember other things about that day, too. How surreal it felt. How we knew [...]