Category: birthdays

  • Today is Mama's 81st birthday. I get to spend the whole day with her, and for that I am very, very grateful. A few years ago, in honor of her 77th birthday, I started compiling a list of things she has taught me. Each year since then, on her birthday, I've added to it.  I wish…

  • I opened the mailbox Friday morning on my way to work, expecting the usual foul contents – bills and junk mail. And there it was, sitting on top of the pile like a glittering jewel – a package containing a T-shirt from my artistic, doodling, blogging friend Cyndee Starr, aka She Who Doodles.    …

  • Images of my oldest brother Buster have hovered in my mind today. Today is his birthday. He would have been 65.  I wonder what he would have been like at 65? Would he have mellowed any at all? Probably not. He was too passionate, too creative, too energetic.  I try to imagine his curly black…

  • I woke in darkness yesterday morning. A thunderstorm paid us a surprise visit in the middle of the night, giving us the whole shebang… lightning, wind, huge thunder booms and buckets of rain. Great snuggling weather.  But a power outage, when you need to get ready for church and work, makes you realize how much…

  • …I met my son Daniel for the first time. Of course, it was love at first sight. With each passing year, I fell deeper and deeper in love with that creative, funny, compassionate, wise old soul. How could I resist? Look at that smile! And that hair!     But, dang it (and thank God!) kids…

  • For two mornings in a row, sunlight has found me snuggled under the covers in my grandmother's room, waking in the warm embrace of so many memories. But for the first time that I can remember, Daddy hasn't been already up and sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, newspaper spread before him.  This morning,…

  • I just returned from my annual retreat with girlfriends to the coast – our 13th or 14th now, I can't remember which – where the sight and sound of the ocean renews my soul and invigorates my spirit. The bonding of girlfriends… the food… the kiss of the sun on my skin… the birds and…

  • Gray clouds arrived in our area Thursday, causing flash floods just down the road, washing away boat docks that had been sitting on dry ground for two years… long enough for grass to grow underneath. Drought to flood – that's how it goes around here lately. I took this on Thursday morning. I stood on…

  • I stepped out for my walk before the sun stretched into the Hollow this morning and right away considered running back in for a sweater…or at least a shirt with sleeves. A 'cold' front blew through our part of Texas yesterday, knocking the high temperatures down from the triple digits all the way to the…

  • Last Monday Tom and I celebrated our thirtieth anniversary. (Yikes! Thirty years??!!) Because of circumstances, we didn't have time to buy each other a card, much less a gift, but his youngest brother and his wife surprised us with a cake, a dozen beautiful salmon-colored roses, a six-pack of Shiner Bock, and a funny anniversary…