Along the Road to Home

~Thyme to go Home, On the Road to Somewhere, Part 3 and the end~ I grew up in a farming family of 7 kids in all.  I'm sure that there were lean times for my folks, moments when they wondered how they would pay their bills and put food into the bellies of 7 hungry boys and girls.  They worked so hard and sacrificed so much in order that their children  might survive and thrive into adulthood.  I'm very sorry that neither of them lived long enough to open up the paper and see the picture shown below. In the springtime of 2010, my sister Sherry and I decided to make a pact that we would hold hands tightly and retire together at the end of the school year in May.  Since Sherry's health was starting to decline and I had visions and dreams of becoming a hospice nurse, retiring seemed the most logical thing to do.  I remember the day we took the picture for this newspaper clipping.  Wes and Sherry had paid a visit to Avenue A Elementary School in Hu...

~Thyme to go Home~ On the road to somewhere Part 2 of 3 There wasn't a whole lot of discussion in the living room at Mike's house in Montrose, Colorado that April evening in 2013.  Both of us had already decided a few weeks before that we would get married when school was finished in May that year.  The only thing we had not decided was where our wedding would be.  I remember quite clearly how I broached the subject when after supper that evening I said to Mike, "I think we should get married at school in front of all the kids.  What do you think about that?  Is that ok with you?" I waited for him to say "no" to that idea. Instead, he simply said "ok". And so that settled it. We would be getting married at school. There was less than a month to figure out how that would work out logistically.   After much consideration and discussion with my principal at the elementary school I was teaching at back in Hutchinson, we scheduled our wedd...

~ thyme to go home~ On the road to somewhere ~Part 1   As a kid growing up in the little south central Kansas town of Haven, I never entertained the notion of becoming a teacher.  I'm telling you, not EVEN once.  I wasn't sure what I would do with life up until about my senior year of high school and because it was time to think about going to college (and that was a given in our household),  I began to think of what might lie ahead.  When I entered college that August of 1973 as a lowly freshman at Hutchinson Community Junior College (as it was called at that time),  I thought being a secretary would be fun.  After all, I loved to type and was actually very good at it, so it seemed a perfect fit for me.  That idea lasted until the end of my first semester there.  After only a few short months I knew that I wanted to go a different direction and ended up transferring after Christmas to a private college in nearby Newton, Kansas. ...

It's the day before Valentine's Day and because there is no school tomorrow for us in Ponca City, the kids in our district will be celebrating with a party today.  Their excitement was spilling over yesterday as they began to put their greetings into each other's decorated bags that are pretty much precariously attached to the sides of their desks.  I quickly began adding yet one more layer of scotch tape to hold them in place as I hoped they would not break apart with the weight of all the "goodies" that were going inside of them.  Today about 2:30 all those cards and treats will be enjoyed by the 19 kids that are mine this year. Valentine's Day parties~you gotta love 'em. 40 years of parties at school have come and gone now.  In some districts that I have been in, there are more celebrations than others.  I remember back in the very early days of the 1980's (and that seems like a very long time ago) that we had one for Halloween, a feast for ...

We caught the sunset a short while ago as we were heading back home to Newkirk after eating supper in Ponca City.  Since Mike and  I love to chase the setting sun every chance we get, we were thankful to be able to pull off the road as we headed north so I could get a picture of it.  It was simple yet most beautiful at the very same time. It's been quite a day, one filled with unexpected early morning sewer problems that seemed as if they would be impossible to fix before Monday.  For a brief moment in time, I imagined us heading to stay at a motel in town until someone could come and fix the major issue that we had going on between the laundry room and bathroom.  We made call after call as we went down the listings in the phonebook for anyone who might be able to fix something on a Saturday morning.  Just when I was about to give up hope, Mike was able to find a company in Ponca City that would be able to come out yet this morning, but the charges woul...

I remember well the day I cried in front of my first graders at Olathe Elementary School in the mountains of southwestern Colorado.  It was noontime and while they were at lunch, I got the message that all women hate to receive as they wait for the results of their mammograms to come back.  My doctor's office in Montrose had called to tell me that my long overdue yearly test, the one that was nearly 5 years past due, had shown signs of a suspicious area in the left breast.  I needed to come back in for a different kind of x-ray to determine what the problem area meant and if further tests would be warranted.   I had only one thought in mind as I settled in to read my students a story after lunch. Could it be the beginnings of cancer? Visibly shaken, I should have taken the advice of my two sweet friends and teaching cohorts to just go on home for the rest of the day.  Those two women would have gladly taken my kids in with theirs.  I declined and s...

The calendar turned the page to February yesterday and for the life of me I cannot figure out where the 31 days of January disappeared to.  It's like one morning you are waking up and realizing just how weird it seems to write "2020" on a check, and the next day you are already buying valentines for the grandkids. At its best, life is fleeting. At its worst, it's over before you realize it. The brevity of our existence on this planet we all call "home" should really provide the inspiration for the rallying call of how we spend our hours, days, and years here.  Wise people should be asking themselves, "Am I doing what I should be doing?  Am I giving my time and efforts to the right people, things and places each day?  In the end, what is it that I hope people will have to remember about me?" I think about that so much these days. Last evening as Mike and I watched the evening news, a story came on that spoke of the average life expectan...