Where seeds of thought have room to grow
Category: Family
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Ike is really, really big. He's making me a little nervous now as I see the outer bands taking swipes at the dots on the Texas map where I have loved ones. My family is "hunkering down," my brother finally agreeing (last time I talked to him anyway) to heed the mandatory evacuation order…
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I owe an apology to the Houston/Galveston area. You see, every year I escape with a group of women to Port Aransas, near Corpus Christi, for a much anticipated, very necessary, retreat from our normal routines. We're scheduled to go next weekend, so when it looked like Hurricane Ike was steering straight for our high-rise condo,…
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I'm a Band mom today…first football game of the season. I emailed two pages to my teacher last night just under the midnight deadline, then woke a few hours later before dawn to move the laundry around, pay some bills, and be ready to chaperone a bus full of high-schoolers to a sun-kissed stadium where…
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Seventeen years ago Tommy shouldered his green Big Bird backpack, smiled for the camera by the front door, then took off for his first day of kindergarten. Every "first day" since that morning, I've been snapping pictures (the last few years under verbal assault.) Today was no exception. But it was the last 'first…
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It's done – Daniel is back at UT. I dropped him off this afternoon after his allergy doctor check-up, along with some boxes of Capri Sun and root beer, and a couple of black trash bags filled with blankets, his pillow, and things he forgot to take yesterday, like his computer monitor (carried separately, not…
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"Ah, here you are. When did you sneak down to the garage?" "When you and Daniel were busy laughing at stupid videos on the computer." "Huh?" "You and Daniel were sitting there at the computer laughing your heads off over something." "We haven't been looking at videos…we were looking up…
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Summer clouds remind me of Mam-ma's hair – so white and fluffy. She was my mother's mother…my grandmother…my babysitter and more. Yesterday would have been Mam-ma's 103rd birthday. Acute leukemia took her just before she turned eighty-eight. Her death was the catalyst Tom and I needed to get our family away from the Houston Ship Channel…
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One of the great things about marrying Tom was inheriting a pack of younger brothers. When I say pack, I mean PACK: Steve, Joe, Russ, Mike, Robbie, and John. He also has two older brothers, Kenny and Randy! I was the youngest of four, myself, and had always wanted a little brother or sister. Anytime…
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I just realized that in less than a week, Daniel will be gone again, swallowed in a sea of burnt orange at the University of Texas. For me, that means no more South Park episodes or Strong Bad emails on the computer; no more classic Calvin and Hobbes cartoons; no more Robert Heinlein short stories.…
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…So we're driving through Yellowstone National Park and come to this traffic jam. Turns out there's a mama black bear and her cub near the road. It's crowded and Tom's in a little bit of a hurry to get through the park, so we keep going, but his brother John stops. "I climb into the back of my…
Long Hollow 