I spent a large chunk of this past rainy Friday in a hospice room at the Veteran’s Hospital. Visiting with my cousin, Neil, and his sister Eva, reliving our childhood memories was time well spent. Neil and Eva are my first cousins, part of a family of six siblings. Their home was only a short […]

Years ago, while fishing on Ice Lake on Manitoulin Island in Canada, my family and I discovered the ruins of a huge, mysterious-looking stone house overlooking the lake. There wasn’t much left standing except a few portions of the old stone walls.   Later, we met a man in Michigan who had grown up in […]

Picture a hungry writer sitting in an unheated attic, wearing a ragged head scarf and moth-eaten sweater over shabby clothes. She’s blowing on her fingers, warming them just enough to dip the pen into the ink well again. Then she scribbles a final sentence “the end” on a page of cheap paper, lays it reverently […]

I recently discovered this old photo of my dad and me and I treasure it. The date on the back says December 15, 1952. I was one month shy of turning two-years-old. That’s my mom on the couch beside us wearing her bobby socks and Keds. Dad is dressed in his work clothes, so he […]

When I was a child, the only thing I knew to do with dandelions was blow on the little puffballs and watch the seeds float off into the wind. As an adult, I heard rumors that some people ate dandelion greens, but I didn’t know anyone who did. A few years ago I went to […]