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Failure and Faith: Lessons from the Duck Puddle

Cora Jo arrived at dress rehearsal in full makeup and fresh tights, with her sweet curls tightened back slick against her head under a tiara. We sat in the audience together, checking off each act as it crossed the stage. She wrung her hands, bit her lips, and admired...

Showing Off

Today I remembered the day my Granny Jane showed off for me. I was twenty-five, a mostly-grown woman, and she was seventy-two, still recovering from hip and knee surgery, and fighting sleep apnea, adult onset diabetes, and other ailments that she wouldn’t complain...

A Star is Born

Today is my little sister’s birthday. I was four when she was born, and  the week my mom went to the hospital to have her, we had two guys from the “Up with People” tour staying at our house for the night. My Granny Helen was there, and she made...

School Supplies

Had a small breakdown today. I could not get the stapler to work. Here was my first thought: “Ugh! How am I going to homeschool my kids if I can’t even work a stapler!” Granted, the last thing that was stapled was probably batman’s cape or a three-inch thick stick to...

Girl Meets Horse

Cora Jo has wanted a horse for quite some time. *spoiler alert: she will not be getting a horse at the end of this post.* I imagined that it was a fleeting obsession that would come and go with the motorized hamsters. This past spring she made it abundantly clear that...

Hermit Crabs

I wanted to write a poem for today—as I have each Friday, but I have these hermit crab pictures that my kids are dying to share with everyone and I just couldn’t rouse the inner muse on hermit crabs. In Galveston, I grudgingly took the kids down to the beach (Is that...