Along the Road to Home

To some, it's just an old typewriter and an antiquated reminder of how we used to do things.   To others, old timers (just like me) who called Hutchinson, Kansas their home once, it's a memory of a time when there used to be a business called "Midwestern Typewriter Company" and the way to dial someone in Hutch was to use the now defunct prefix "Mohawk" . But to me, this old type writer represents something totally different and it's all because I know of its story.  The remembrance of how it came to be is something forever seared into my memory and now at age nearly 65, it is as vivid a recollection as if it happened only yesterday. I will forever count it a blessing to have grown up in a large family of 7 children in all.  Our parents were hard working people who in reality probably never had the expectation of making a vast fortune.  Mom told me once that we were actually quite poor when I was a little girl but if we were, I never saw it. ...

My mother has been gone now for nearly 13 years and as I approach the age of 65 in the fall, I find myself wishing that I would have paid more attention to the stories that she told me of life long ago.  You know how it is in the days of our youth, most of that which is told to us just never really seems to sink in.  I remember a good deal of it, but oh how I wish she were here today to just tell me a few things one more time. One thing I do remember and will always hold close to my heart, especially now in the days of the pandemic, was the story of a fragile and small piece of material that she showed me one day.  For many years my mom had kept the little white bundle folded up neatly in her dresser drawer.  Now she was handing it to me for safe keeping.    It looked like a handkerchief and one that was quite worn out to boot.  Mom explained to me that it was the face covering that her mother had made to shield my mom's little face when she was ju...

The final lesson of the 2019-2020 school year came to a close yesterday afternoon, one month after the last day of continuous learning from home.   It was one that I had hoped to complete right after spring break, but unfortunately Covid 19 got in the way.  The lesson came to its wonderful and long awaited conclusion when our good friend Julia dropped by our home in Newkirk on her way to visit family in Norman, Oklahoma.  She had two stow aways with her named Opal and Ophelia.  Julia's passengers had been the facilitators of a special kind of lesson that incorporated the ideas of community/geography/and just plain human kindness. Mike and Julia were in the same class back at Haven High School and graduated in 1977. Opal and Ophelia, aka "The Moose on the Loose", were little ambassadors from our 5th grade classroom at Liberty Elementary School in Ponca City, Oklahoma.  OK, let's just get right to the elephant in the room .   To some unbel...

I've said it so many times in the past 3 years. And if I had a dollar for every time that I had done so, well I'd have a lot of dollars. "If Sherry was here......." My sister Sherry died June 16th, 2017 from the effects of her lifelong habit of smoking, a practice that she held onto until a few months before it finally took her life.  Sherry had end stage COPD and when her lungs had finally had enough, they gave up and so did she.  We buried her earthly remains on the Kansas prairie back home in Haven where one day I too will join her.  I visit her as often as I can these days and place flowers upon our gravestone.   Before she died, I promised Sherry that I would come to visit her at Laurel Cemetery and that seemed to make her happy.  There's something special about a promise and if you make one with another person, well then you need to do something about it. And that something is to honor it. So very much has happened in the time that has passed...

I came across a picture yesterday that made me feel a bit melancholy.  Has that ever happened to you?  It's a strange kind of feeling, that melancholy sensation, and for the life of me I really can't tell you why the image below made me feel that way. ~nearing the top of the Grand Mesa in Mesa County, Colorado~ It was taken in June of 2013 when Mike and I had been married for less than a month.  I was in the initial throes of my homesickness when one afternoon we took a drive to the top of the Grand Mesa, not all that far from our home in Montrose, Colorado.  I'm sure that Mike probably suggested it, thinking that seeing some of the beautiful mountain scenery would help to take my mind off of my loneliness for my old home in Kansas as well as see some of the beauty that my new home in the Rocky Mountains had to offer.   As we neared the top of the Grand Mesa, we came across patches of snow that had not yet melted from the winter months.  Mi...

I grew up in the times of the polio scare, a moment in history that all parents dreaded for their children.  I didn't know enough to be afraid of contracting the disease, only that my parents were absolutely adamant about certain things for us kids like never going to a swimming pool and for some reason, staying out of mud puddles.  I really don't even recall hearing the word polio before that day in the early '60s when our entire 9 person family headed to the elementary school gym in nearby Burrton, Kansas to receive our polio vaccination.   The memories of the little girl that I used to be are fading but the recollection of that day when my siblings and I had a vaccine laced sugar cube placed into our mouths has remained with me all these many years later.  And for the record, it wasn't a sweet taste like I imagined it would be.  I recall the bitterness and to see our faces as we swallowed it down was more than likely a testament to the fact that it d...