Puberty probably had something to do with it — that time in every person’s life when too much anti-acne cream can short-circuit the brain. I was thirteen, weighed 85 pounds, and planned to be mistaken for a supermodel one day. Just because I didn’t like the shag carpet in our den didn’t mean I didn’t choose a haircut with the …
Imagination was my childhood sanctuary on those rural drives. With just a little inspiration from the passing Texas landscape, I could fabricate life-like figures from the pages of my mind. I envisioned fanciful deer leaping through rows of cotton upon a summer windshield. In October, I invented a window-wide audition of tiny raindrops, each showcasing their best to dance with …
The music was different here. Unlike the staticky radio in Daddy’s Ford, this music was living and active, piercing my nine-year-old heart and energizing my soul. We didn’t just listen to the music; we sang along, from the youngest Sunbeam to the oldest member of the Brotherhood. This was the wooden church of my childhood. I knew this place well …
“3/4 cup of Judges 5:25.” The first time I read this was in 1969. Printed on a torn slip of notebook paper, my Sunday School teacher gave me this assignment as I joined my mom at the door. All the way home in our ’66 Impala, I chattered about the cooking party the following Saturday. Each student in our rural …
Holiday prep on the farm always involved the kitchen. And when you live twenty-one miles from the nearest grocer, you find stockpiling sugar, flour, and spices as traditional as evergreen, tinsel, and holly. Mama had lived through the depression, so our farmhouse had little chance of scarcity, especially during this time of year. Almost 600 square feet of its eighteen-hundred …
I grew up in the Swinging Sixties on a suspended wooden seat, pumping hard to kick the sky. While adults talked of riots, assassinations, and a war in Vietnam, I thought of playgrounds, Schwinn bikes, and Charles Schultz. I watched black and white episodes of Bonanza, Andy Griffith, and The Lucy Show at home despite major television companies producing them …
It’s said that the best sermons are the ones lived. I can agree as I have lived my share. One of these, in fact, involved a Mother Hen and me. As a preschooler, I spent my days roaming the grounds of our family farm. Maybe “grounds” is not the best word, as it makes the land sound well-manicured like an …
My mother was not a harsh woman. She was a quiet individual, only comfortable with lifetime friends. While others flew off the handle, Mother kept her peace. But when she wanted to make a point, my mother did so — in poignant one-on-one conversations. I experienced many of those conversations for she had a higher value on who I was …
A good deal of my childhood was spent in a white clapboard farmhouse with grey shingles. A long concrete sidewalk drew visitors to the house between outstretched arms of elm trees and smiling faces of daisies. The raised, wooden porch welcomed as it hugged two sides of the house with sturdy pillars and a picket railing. Granddaddy built the three-bedroom …
She climbed into the dining chair easily. It was the staying in it that proved difficult. First she dropped her fork, then after a trip underneath the table and a trip back up top for air, her napkin also fell. Both would have proved an easy retrieval for longer arms, but both were forbidden of help. A secret unexpectedly remembered, …
