Darkness welcomed me as I walked through the door. Pausing to allow my eyes to adjust to the red low-wattage glow, I smiled, anticipating the day. Although working in the darkroom sometimes meant no light at all, I liked the discoveries I knew lay ahead. Chemicals, wash, paper—all were light-sensitive but the best images resulted from the dark. The room was a …
Book-satchel in tow, I scrambled off the dusty, yellow school bus onto where the farm-to-market road comes to a “T.” Finally home, I was glad to leave the hand-clapping game in the front of the bus and the loud kissing in the back. My second-grade stomach grumbled loudly, anticipating the brownies my mother promised to bake. As I rounded the …
Lavishness leapt up at us the minute we signed for delivery. Three oversized boxes awaited us at our Taiwanese gatehouse, and we were glad both of us came to collect. Their bulk and weight would have proved an unmanageable challenge for just one person. A couple we knew in grad school had asked us to send their church our family’s …
The height and depth and breadth of parables happen around us all the time. But sometimes, you must wait a lifetime to realize the significance of the moment. Kernels of truth dropped in mundane soil will bear fruit only when given space in your memory. My parable starts with a sticky preschooler I knew well and was trying to raise …
The bakery started as a small hole-in-the-wall, hidden behind a single glass door along a narrow Taiwanese alley. This mom-and-pop shop smelled of freshly baked bread the moment you opened the door. Joint-owned by a Kiwi chef and his Chinese wife, Chef Dereke named it Finga’s, for everything within was handmade. In time, Dereke and his wife Lily were no …
Yellowed pages fluttered to the ground as I opened the manila folder. Like the sugarplum fairies of dreams, memories danced into my mind when I recognized the font. A simple Christmas dialog written on a borrowed typewriter in the Texas hill country one December. As I bent to gather the pages into my hands, recollections of a nineteen-year-old-me arose with …
As I wound down the narrow road, I felt anticipation build. Every bend of the foliage and arc of the bridges increased my expectancy. When the shuttle bus rounded the last corner, I gasped as the 55-foot-tall Norway spruce and encircling evergreens illuminated the front lawn. Over a century ago, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted suggested this spectacular approach to …
For the sum total of my twenty-eight years, my mother’s dressing had always been on my holiday table. This time, 7500 miles separated me and that pan of crumbled biscuits and cornbread. Would it truly be Thanksgiving if that stuffing wasn’t on the table? I was an adult by all appearances and had a family of my own. I could make …
Granddaddy’s eyesight was in decline by the time I was born. Maybe it had something to do with the kerosene lantern he read by in his early years. Despite his eighth-grade education, Granddaddy loved books before electricity arrived in his shack. His Bible and dictionary were tattered and worn from decades of use. Because I was born late into my …
Although I love this spot, the location does not keep me here. It’s not the beckoning sun, gradually filling the stained glass and splashing the walls with gold, emerald, and indigo. It’s not the hushing silence interrupted only by the loudly ticking clock. And it’s not even the strong espresso, as necessary as it is, hinting of raw sugar and …
