Our church was crowded last Sunday, as it always is on Easter. Sitting in the pew in front of us was a young family. The two boys, about five and ten years old, were well-behaved and well-dressed, each in tan pants, a button-down shirt, and an adorable bow tie. This reminded me of a column I wrote more than 20 years ago, about another Easter Sunday. I think it’s still relevant today: As I waited for Mass to begin on Easter morning, I watched some [...]
When I was a freshman in college, I went to Ft. Lauderdale over spring break with my roommate and a few other friends. One day, on a very crowded beach, a sour-looking older woman sitting near us asked us what school we were from. We told her, and she rolled her eyes. She was a teacher at another college, whose dates for spring break differed from ours, but overlapped by a few days. “I came here on vacation,” she told us, “to get away from [...]
A number of years ago—eight, to be exact—we were visiting our daughter and got into a discussion about the upcoming election. I told my daughter that she would make a good president, and suggested jokingly that she consider running. Then, just for fun, I went on to name different departments, agencies, or cabinet positions that members of our family would be suited for. I came up with one for my husband, our kids, and a few other family members—everyone but myself. That’s when I decided [...]
Our pastor announced last weekend that he was going to be away for a few days, on a silent retreat. In addition to no talking, there would be no phones, internet, electronics, or communication of any kind. Just—silence. And meditation. And prayer. I know several people who have done silent retreats in the past, some as long as 30 days. The very idea of that amazes me. Even getting past the idea of taking a sabbatical from your regular life for a full month is [...]
When people ask where I’m originally from, I usually say “the Chicago area.” Or sometimes “a small town near Chicago,” which is a little more accurate. And even though I’ve spent most of my life living on the outskirts of major cities, I consider myself a small-town girl at heart. That’s why last Friday felt so good. It was a gloomy, rainy morning, and I was getting ready to head out to the doctor’s office for a routine check-up when I got a text from [...]
“The last two holiday traditions I’ll ever give up,” I told my son, “are cooking a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving, and baking Christmas cookies.” I made the comment as my son and I were talking on the phone, a few days before Thanksgiving, about our holiday plans. I had mentioned that we knew a lot of people who, instead of cooking a traditional turkey dinner, had “alternate plans.” Some were still going with a turkey dinner, but were purchasing either a ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat-up option [...]
The most poignant and powerful speech I have ever listened to was one I heard more than a decade ago, and to this day, I still remember every word of it. Of course, there were only eleven words. I’ve written about this before, but it is more relevant today than ever, and I think it warrants revisiting. It took place near the end of a weeklong “Inspirational Speakers” workshop I attended – along with about a hundred other people. At the end of the week, [...]
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 just woke up from two unsettling dreams, the kind that made me think, after I popped awake, “Oh, thank God that was just a dream.” One of them was a variation of the standard “last day of school and l’m not ready for the big test” dream, although it was more complicated and intense than that. The other dream was a lot scarier. A Japanese Mafia-type man was forcing me to write propaganda, and threatening to kill my family if I didn’t cooperate. He [...]
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 [...]