They caught my eye this morning. Their stems standing tall. Their petite pink flowers matching the morning sky. My punchbowl begonia was beautiful. Perhaps the lens through which I saw them made my vision rosy. The day had begun beautifully, so it could be everything looked lovely. I meditated with our cat Moonbeam coming by for a visit. I did some sun salutations. I made the bed and Kevin made the tea, delivering it to me as I read the morning news. “It’s almost Christmas,” he said. “And just a week until my birthday,” I grinned. “You deserve a present,”

Growing up on an Oklahoma subsistence farm with her 12 siblings, she was taught to keep her personal business private. That changed in October of 1991 when Clarence Thomas sought his lifetime appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Anita Hill’s moral courage called. Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Thomas confirmation hearings. She detailed his sexual harassment while she worked as a lawyer at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It included everything from pressuring her for dates to graphic talk about pornography. The 14 white men grilled her for hours and, as The New Yorker reported, did everything possible

As best we can recall, it’s a first. This weekend we will celebrate a 50th wedding anniversary in our family.  My grandparents all passed by the time I was in grade school. I don’t remember my parents ever celebrating an anniversary, and Dad died when mom was just 59. Some divorced. My sister Diane came the closest but lost the love of her life after 46 years. Both divorce and widowhood meant I’d not make the mark.  But now, we celebrate a miraculous milestone.  A short hospital stay gave my shy brother Dave a chance ask his nurse Jan out on a date.

  The clerk assisting me in the shoe department needed to page for assistance. Talking into the tiny mic hanging from the cord around her neck she said, “I’m helping an athlete.”  I smile to myself at yet another clever corporate marketer making us feel special by being more than a “customer”.  We are now visitors and guests and apparently also athletes. I casually turn my body sideways, pretending I’m not listening so as to avoid our mutual embarrassment. We both know I’m not an athlete.  Sports were not a part of my childhood. I never saw either of my

Huddled under heavy blankets, we sat circled around the blazing fire. Above us the waxing crescent moon glowed between tree branches beginning to bare and a star-filled sky that delighted us city dwellers. Our annual autumn gathering was underway.   Two of us became orphans in just the past month. Each lost a mother who’d more than nine decades including the Great Depression, multiple wars, and two waves of feminism. Years of our repeated ritual gave a sense of safety, so the sharing of stories started at once.  Gretchen painted a picture of her mother’s final years, months, and days, her