I’ve always known what the word ephemeral meant, but I’ve never used it--possibly because I didn’t know how to spell it and I’m not completely sure of its pronunciation. It means, in case you aren’t sure, “lasting a very short time.”

Coming from my position on life’s calendar, I think that includes everything except possibly hot flashes, bad movies, and sleepless nights. However, the ephemerality is often in retrospect, isn’t it? When my kids were young, I thought the terrible twos went on for about twelve years. When it was my grandkids, it only lasted minutes--days at the most.

The bluebird’s on the clothesline this morning. He’s so quick. I wish he’d stay, but he has too much going on to pose outside my office window for long.

The forsythia bush is like its own little sunbeam in the corner of the yard where it’s been the whole time we’ve lived here. Sunrise this morning was brightly, achingly beautiful. One of my favorite pictures ever is of the rainbow that lit the sky over the neighbors’ barn. They last such a short time, don’t they, and yet they last forever, too.

If you don’t like who’s in the White House, his tenure lasts an agonizingly long time. If you do like him, you relax a little because you feel safer, but no sooner have you put up the footrest of the recliner than it’s election year yet again.

Loss makes you more aware of how fleeting everything is. That’s when you realize that the term a good, long life is subjective. Because to the ones left behind, long wasn’t nearly long enough. Loss also reminds you to be grateful. Again and again and again. For family, friends, and memories--and for that life that wasn’t long enough.

Nothing is more transitory than weather, although I believe the wind and rain are here to stay. What we need to do, other than wait it out, is find the beauty in it. Regine Brindle does that better than most. She’s one of my gratitudes today, for sharing her pictures. More than just visual, they gift the other senses as well. For the writer in me, she always makes me find words. Lacy, anyone? Fragile? Tenderness?

My grandson took this picture, which I stole without conscience, at Kilgore Falls in Maryland. I don’t know its story, but I do know looking at the photograph builds a story in the mind.

The objects of the photographs move instantly from how they look there. The ice blows off the trees. The waterfall continues to roar and move the wood in the picture. Ephemerality at its best.

And maybe that’s what I’ll end this with. Because of photographs and memories, we get to keep those moments. Even if we are at a point that we don’t actually recall them, I’m not so sure we don’t always remember on some plane how they made us feel. I’m not so sure we can’t still experience the joy. I hope so.

Have a good week. Be grateful. Be nice to somebody.

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I’ve done that particular game on Facebook a few times. I’m not very exciting. There are usually a whole bunch of things I’ve never, ever done, and a few things I never, ever will. However, further into my ongoing discussion of age, never have I ever seen this much water!

I remember when the dam was built and how exciting it was to the community. It was beyond my comprehension that land would be covered with water in order to make other land safe from being covered with water. (If I don’t have that right, don’t tell me--it means I’ve been wrong for 60 years and the whole thing with dams and covering up entire towns with water is still beyond me.)

But, regardless of the dam, I never, ever remember this much water coming down in this short of a time. My prayers are with those who are harmed or threatened by flooding.

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I wanted to be fearless by this age, you know? But even though my kids are adults and my grandkids either adults or a perfectly wonderful adolescent, fears accompany me through every day. Will something happen to them? Will their convictions and mores be denied them by a government that wants only its believers to have even the most fundamental of rights? My first great-grandson is little and sweet and ... his grandfather says ... chill. What will the world be as he grows up?

As you can probably tell, I’m having trouble writing this. Is anyone else sitting by their window on a Saturday morning looking out at the rain and wondering if there’s a message there? I am a person of faith--although my faith is being referred to these days as in-name-only because I don’t check all the right boxes--and I don’t pretend to know whether it’s a message or not. Is it a wake-up call telling us to take care of what we’ve been given? Or one telling us to honor only those to whom much has been given? To care for only those who live the lives we would choose?

One of my fears is ignorance, both my own and that of others. No, that’s not right--I don’t fear the ignorance; I fear that we’re too comfortable with it if it suits our own wants and needs. I don’t go to Target anymore because it leapt so eagerly to forego DEI, yet I buy from Amazon all the time. I carry my own shopping bags to lessen my use of plastics, and yet I buy iced tea in plastic jugs because I like it better than my own.

If admitting this doesn’t do anything except make me look alarmingly fallible in my efforts to do what’s right, that’s enough. I don’t like looking self-righteous (even when I am), but a certain degree of sanctimony doesn’t give me free reign to demand sameness from others.

Will I ever understand them, the ones who support the way things are now? No. Do I want to? Not so much. But they still have a place at the nation’s table. Their words still deserve to be said, their votes to be counted, and their needs to be met. But not more than anyone else’s. Not at all.

It saddens me, the way my writing circles around and around. I can’t help thinking it’s doing the drain thing and will eventually just fall silent. Although I don’t intend to open the Window to politics, it happens so often, doesn’t it? I apologize for that, because I never meant it to be a political column, but don’t apologize for the beliefs that cause it.

Just as I’m not perfect in those beliefs (see my record on plastics, Target, and Amazon above), I can’t pretend they’re not there, that I think everything’s going to be all right.

That’s one of those fears I spoke of, that it won’t all be all right. Never have I ever thought I’d feel that way.

Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.

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Years ago, Duane worked on something in the front yard, finished it, and laid a screwdriver in the elbow created by a branch reaching out from the trunk of a tree. He forgot it was there. Then he remembered and he meant to get it, but ... well, he didn’t. When he finally did, the elbow had fattened up around the screwdriver so that he couldn’t pull it free.

Over time, we watched the tree trunk grow around the screwdriver. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point it disappeared entirely.

We are a family with many, many screwdrivers in our possession, cheap and not-so-cheap, yellow-and-black, clear with a red stripe, ones with rubber handles, precision ones in a little plastic box, etc. So, the truth is, he never really missed that screwdriver. He probably bought a new set to replace it. We had some years there where he and I had a noisily unspoken competition going between books, which I bought, and tools, which he did.

When we did some work in the house, and later, when Duane and the boys built my office in the garage, we had lots of open walls. We put newspapers in a few of them, and I think a few more things related to the time. We also found a few newspapers from the previous remodeling of our house. No real news, but the prices on groceries in the ads wouldn’t buy the bags we shop with today. I saw patterns for sale in the newspapers, Billy Graham prayers, and comics.

Many, many time capsules were buried or put in other safe places during the bicentennial year, at the turn of the century, and this year, the country’s 250th birthday. There are cornerstones on old buildings with the date and sometimes cryptic messages carved into their surfaces. I wonder what the people who open these will say. What is this, for heaven’s sake? Why would they save that? Can anyone read this?--I think it’s cursive, kind of like the hieroglyphics of that era.

There was a concrete slab around the well pump where I grew up. A windmill had brought the water up at one time, and the skeleton of it still stood with its feet buried in that rough-edged, stony concrete. Also on that slab were my sisters’ initials and probably the date, but I only remember the initals.

Christine Ann died when she was three, long before I was born, and I ache now, thinking of what my mom and dad felt whenever they saw her initials there. At my age, I wonder how accurate my memories of those times are. But I still feel that ache.

I’ve been to the Smithsonian twice. Both times, it was overwhelming in what it had to offer. It was also, to the best of historians’ ability, accurate in its exhibits. Those things were like the nation’s initials in concrete. It is important that those initials are not removed, because even if we can’t actually remember how native Americans felt, how slaves felt, how women felt, we need tangible things to make us feel what they did.

I grieve even now over a little girl I didn’t know and the parents who were so changed by her life and death that I didn’t know them as they were then, either. But I’m glad for the initials, for her few pictures as she sat on the back porch. I’m glad to be reminded of what my family history is.

I want to be reminded of our country’s history, too. As it really was, not just the pretty parts. I don’t want it to be like the screwdriver, buried so deeply in the past that we don’t remember what color it was, whether it was straight edge or Phillips, or its size.

As Charley Sutton always says, have a good day and make some good memories. While you’re at it, don’t bury the bad ones too deep. Be nice to somebody.

Buy me a coffee ...

Whenever I can’t think of something to write about, I make lists. I didn’t get the idea from Facebook, where there are lists all the time, or even from Dave Letterman, who singlehandedly made the Top Ten list famous.

No, wait ... I used to listen to the Top Ten Songs of the Week on WLS from Chicago every week. I can’t remember the day, time, or even the DJ--Ron Riley, maybe?--but I never missed it.

When I tried to figure out where the concept of Top Tens came from, I couldn’t, but it does appear everyone has used it at one time or another. Musical Top Tens, like WLS in the 1960s (yes, I am that old) evidently started up with Billboard in the 1940s (no, I’m not that old) but there have been lists of ten around for a really long time.

Today, the first Saturday in August, I’m going to make a Top Ten List on the Window. Chances are I won’t do it every month, but I will welcome other people’s Top Tens. I hope to get some.

Now that I’ve made that decision, I’m not sure what Top Ten to start with. Google really led me down the garden path of Try this! Since I don’t want to put too much time or thought into this--remember the old part--I’m going to go with my Top Ten songs. This list is subject to change by the time the day is over, but for now ... here we go.

1. Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver

2. Desperado - The Eagles

3. Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen wrote it; I think K. D. Lang owned it when she sang it.

4. Amazing Grace

5. American Pie - Don McLean

6. Over the Rainbow - Most anybody, but especially Judy Garland

7. The Sound of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel

8. It Is Well With My Soul

9. Sweet Baby James - James Taylor

10. Good Vibrations - the Beach Boys

I was surprised at how long it took me to come up with 10, or I should say, with only 10. My husband said his Top Ten would have 50 songs in it. Three minutes after I finally typed the last title, I’m having second thoughts. But then I remember that summer of “Good Vibrations” and ... yeah ... it’ll have to stay.

I’ve said before that some of the best and some of the worst times in my life have been connected to music. I remember hearing “Leaving on A Jet Plane” the day Duane and I said goodbye before he left for Vietnam. I remember Andy Williams singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” at Bobby Kennedy’s funeral. I remember that “In the Garden” was my mom’s favorite hymn.

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The Beatles and the British Invasion made a couple of not-good years more fun. More exciting. I still remember seeing Woodstock at Peru’s downtown Roxy. I listened to Peter, Paul, and Mary and other folk artists who brought to life a feeling of social responsibility stirring that never quite went away. I’m glad it didn’t.

I’m a terrible dancer, but have danced what seems like 100 times to “Old Time Rock and Roll,” yelled a few obscenities with Tommy James and the Shondells on “Mony, Mony,” and still join in on “Sweet Caroline” even though I don’t sing any better than I dance.

I have loved writing this, remembering the times and places and feelings that connect to my Top-Ten-and-then-some songs. I hope you share yours, and more importantly, I hope you remember those times, places, and feelings, too.

Have a great week. Be nice to somebody.

Mostly, though, they are employees.

We pay their salaries, we finance their perquisites, of which there are many--including an inflated and non-proportional retirement. The only way we have of firing them is with our vote, which they--along with their boss--are intent on manhandling into submission in ways that will benefit some of them. Never us. Never the employers. Them.

Oddly enough, the ones they choose to represent at their jobs--yes, I said choose--are the upper echelon of the employers. The billionaires. The CEOs. The two percent. The lobbyists. Their boss.

Even at the local level, they choose to honor the wishes of people they like, people who aren’t squeaky wheels, people who give them carte blanche with the city and county coffers, people who’ve never punched a clock or needed the services of a food pantry because they couldn’t both eat and pay the light bill on their two-paycheck income. I can’t argue it much because they are indeed elected, and while I no longer believe overmuch in the legitimacy of federal or state elections, I have full faith in local ones. Far from making it difficult to vote, they make it as easy as they can and I appreciate that.

It must be admitted here that although I do have that full faith I just mentioned, voting where I live literally never goes the way I want it to. It never changes, and while many people are unhappy with how it goes, they either don’t vote at all or they are perfectly willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces. Judging by social media, I would conclude that they’re terrified to pull the other proverbial lever in case someone finds out about it.

But even then, the elected representatives are there to represent the city and the county, not only the people who voted for them. A local official recently referred to her constituency as the “silent majority” in our county. I wonder, if they are silent, how she knows what they want. That’s a mystery I’m working on. I’ll let you know how it comes out.

Back to the federal government, though, I will say, as an angry and frustrated private citizen, that they also represent their sizable and noisy sycophancy. The ones in addition to the ones I already named, I mean. They are often seen on golf courses and at extravagant events where the cost of a plate would buy school lunches for every kid in our school and then some.

As a postal worker for 30 years, I’m pretty insistent we worked for the people whose mail we handled, but in truth we worked for the government. For the party that was and still is intent on privatizing the USPS, for whatever entity decided on postmaster generals who were intent on privatizing us. We handled acres of campaign mail that had to receive special treatment.

Many people told us, often from a position of towering rage, that they “paid our salaries.” They suggested we hurry up because their time was valuable while presumably ours was not. The ones who said this were often the ones who asked or demanded that we backdate their tax returns if they were sending them out on April 16. We didn’t do it.

We were unionized. We made decent money. We had good vacation time, good insurance, and a nice retirement we paid a lot into. We had had sick leave that we earned. It’s been a while, but as I recall, we got 13 days a year. We saved it up if we could. If we didn’t have enough for a long illness, we could go on leave without pay or, I think, there were short-term and long-term disability options if necessary. I believe those things could be denied us at the behest of our employers.

Those were the days.

The thing is, though, we either had to go to work or, if we could not, we had to be in some kind of status where the employers knew where we were and why were were unable to work. We couldn’t not show up for 142 days because we were depressed. Not that we didn’t get depressed. Not that none of us ever had to go on disability for that reason. We couldn’t just go into the hospital for weeks, either, especially if we decided to break contact with our employers until it was convenient for us. Not that there wasn’t some kind of pay status available, but we couldn’t just not show up at work w/o any explanation or documentation to our employers. Lots of explanation. Lots of documentation.

Ahem. When it comes to government, I will say again that government officials are employees. While they may enjoy celebrity status, as far as we employers are concerned, they’re just people who need to go to work. When they are there, they need to do their job. For us. Also for their private sycophancies, but we come first.

Because we do indeed pay their salaries. Oh, did I already say that? Well, fine, I’m saying it again. I am fiscally inept. I couldn’t do these jobs I want them to do. But I was a government worker of sorts, too. Like the ones in the first paragraph, I was an employee of the taxpayers even though we were supposed to be self-supporting by charging for our service.

We served the other 98 percent more than the top two. While it was true we had to give special treatment sometimes, it was never at the top of the list—it was a necessary evil. We sold money orders to immigrants for them to pay their bills with and never asked if they were legal or not. We smiled at their babies and handed out suckers. We accepted passport applications and took the pictures without caring at all what color the customer was or what gender they were or who they loved. We didn’t ask their religion or if they had one. We didn’t care what their politics were, although it was often easy to tell.

It seems easy to me as I write this. Jobs are never perfect. Sometimes they come with a whole lot of crap built into their operating systems. Sometimes you work with people who make things more difficult. Sometimes you work for people who do the same thing.

But when you’ve chosen to be an employee, some of that goes with the territory. If it’s your employees’ money you’re spending, you need to be careful how you spend it. If a lot of them are driving beaters to work because that’s all they can afford, you don’t need to buy BMWs or high-dollar anything on their dime. You don’t need a helipad in your backyard or trips given by lobbyists or to play 36 holes of golf and refer to it as work.

You need to do your job, to be responsible, to be accountable to the people you work for, to tell the truth. You need to go to work.

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This has been around a bit lately, but I have, too. It’s been a busy week, but I was sure you’d need to see my bright smiling face over here, so here you go. Thanks for reading.

I started out writing sweet romance.

Of course, I did. I was nine years old, typing a princess story on my aunt’s portable Royal typewriter at a table on my grandparents’ enclosed front porch. From there, I moved to stories about 13-year-olds who crushed on their brothers’ friends. (Think Trixie Belden without the mysteries.) They were much like me, only my heroines had good hair and were allowed to wear lipstick.

As I went through junior high, writing stories in longhand on looseleaf note paper I kept in double-pocketed folders, the stories stayed sweet. Several first kisses were exchanged, some noticing of how guys looked in letter jackets because they all had broad shoulders and hair just a little longer than was actually acceptable. Everyone drove really cool cars and the girls never sat at home on Friday nights; if they didn’t have dates they were perfectly happy to go out with girlfriends in yet another cool car.

And yes, they all had good hair.

Sometimes they swore a little. Not a lot, but likely more than I could have gotten by with.

Time out for marrying, having children, working full time, raising said children, and being a terrible housekeeper, and then I got serious again. I had a ton of Chapter Ones in folders, several main characters whirling around in the back of my mind (behind the insanity of teenagers in the house) I joined RWA. I was a charter member of a chapter. I loved ... no, I loved being part of the whole romantic fiction industry long before I was published.

Which took several books and many, many submissions of expensive photocopies of paper manuscripts in Courier font--remember those? And then I sold a Precious Gems novel, Always Annie. In addition to the lukewarm love scene I’d already written, editor Hilary Sares required another one. A not especially lukewarm one. And a little more sizzle here and there, thank you very much.

For that book and several others, I sizzled. Not a lot, not especially happily, but I wrote a couple of love scenes I was actually proud of. Even now, I think they were pretty good.

I still swore a little, sometimes a little more ... what ... earthily? Not coarsely (in my estimation), not the Bad Words that I never said anyway. But sometimes it was like a United Methodist bishop once said, paraphrasing, if he hit his thumb with a hammer, the first word he said wouldn’t be darn.

I wasn’t writing sweet anymore. While I may insist I don’t know how it happened, I do. Yes, I do.

But personally, when I read, I either skipped or skimmed love scenes. I thought euphemisms were often dumb but I didn’t enjoy the clinical terms, either. They felt forced. Sometimes it felt as if the love scenes were held together by mere threads of story.

As I went along, with different publishers, trying different things, I gave up writing love scenes that included eithe body parts or consummation. Just as I gave up always writing women who had good hair. Yes, that was me you may have heard cheering as I slammed the bedroom door shut. Not because I have any kind of problem with other people writing or reading anything up to and including erotica.

But, as Bob Dylan wrote so eloquently so long ago, It ain’t me, babe.

Frankly, it’s not always easy to say what I want in a story without swearing, so sometimes I do. Not often, but I refer back to what the bishop said.

So, here are the bumps. I think you can write too sweet, but what that means is that it’s too sweet for me, not for your readers. I think you can be too crude , but doing it just because you can isn’t reason enough. For me.

As usual, I don’t have a solution to what is sometimes a problem, and I am the first to admit and complain about the constant obstacles in the publishing road. I do have thoughts, though.

Should we have ratings like movies do? I think it would be a good idea, since what one person considers merely spicy yet another person finds to be unmitigated filth. What one person considers sweet or clean is insipid and colorless by someone else.

Regardless, we will all continue to do what we’ve done all along. We will tell--and hopefully sell--our stories. We will wend the way to happily-ever-after over whatever bumps get in our way. Aren’t we the lucky ones?P. S. If you're looking for a sweet and clean marriage resurrected story, Early and Nash's is way up there in my list of my own favorites. It's a story of family, faith, and quilting. I hope you'll give it a look.

P. S. If you're looking for a sweet and clean marriage resurrected story, Early and Nash's is way up there in my list of my own favorites. It's a story of family, faith, and quilting. I hope you'll give it a look.

There are declarations of love that are easy to write. When everyone agrees. When admiration is fashionable. When nothing is at stake.

And then there are declarations of love that feel slightly out of time.

This is one of those.

Because in today’s Germany, saying that you love America almost requires justification. How can one admire this country — the land of “political polarization”, “gun violence”, “social inequality”, and “relentless headlines”? Few Western nations are criticized as consistently as the United States.

America may not be a perfect country.

It never was.

But I sometimes feel that particularly in Germany people judge the United States with a moral certainty that is only available to those who have forgotten their own history.

We speak about America as if we owed it nothing.

And yet we owe it more than we often care to admit.

Above all, we forget that history is not made by states, but by people.

It was not “the Americans” who landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

It was Johns, Tims, Mikes.

Young men from Nebraska. From Ohio. From Indiana. From places many Europeans would struggle to find on a map.

They had never seen Europe. Germany had done them no personal harm. And yet they ran into machine-gun fire to end a war that Germany had unleashed upon the world.

Many of them never became fathers.

Never became grandfathers.

They died on a beach thousands of miles from home.

That we live today in a free and democratic Germany is also thanks to them.

And gratitude does not expire.

Perhaps I feel all of this so strongly because America has never been an abstract superpower to me.

America has faces.

My story with this country began in the summer of 2000.

I was a teenager when I first traveled to California. Los Angeles. San Francisco. Highways. The national parks. The Pacific.

At the time, I thought I had simply experienced an extraordinary holiday.

Later I did understand that something had been set in motion inside me that never truly left.

A year later, I returned.

Not for two weeks.

For an entire year.

As a somewhat lost, pubescent high school student, I went on exchange to Indiana.

Much to the quiet alarm of my grandparents who belonged to a generation that had lived through four very different German states — the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and finally the Federal Republic. Their lives were shaped by rupture: war, collapse, rebuilding. Their view of the world was necessarily different from mine.

For them, America was above all the land of Mickey Mouse, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Sesame Street. A country of abundance, advertising, consumerism — loud, colorful, and at times superficial. That was the image their generation had formed over decades. Admiration for America would never have fit comfortably into their worldview.

And yet I sometimes wonder whether, deep down, they knew more than they ever allowed themselves to say.

They had lived through what Germany had done to itself.

They had experienced the bombings, the collapse, and the long, difficult rebuilding. Perhaps they understood very clearly that the freedom their children and grandchildren grew up in was, in no small part, made possible by America. That after the soldiers came the CARE packages. That after liberation came the Marshall Plan. That the Berlin Airlift kept a city alive. That former enemies became allies, and that America became the protective shield of a fragile young democracy.

Perhaps they knew all of that.

But gratitude and admiration are two different things.

The first may well have existed — quiet, unspoken, buried deep.

The second they would likely never have permitted themselves.

Maybe that is the difference between their generation and mine: they knew America through history. I was able to know America through people.

And that is why historical gratitude became personal affection.

I, on the other hand, had the privilege of encountering America not through historical narratives or political debates, but through human beings.

Stuart Sullivan, Christy Sullivan, Sean Sullivan and Patrick “Redbeard” Sullivan welcomed me into their home in Indiana as if I had always belonged there. They did not just give me a room. They gave me a place in their lives.

I did not learn America from news broadcasts.

I learned America at the kitchen table.

At shared dinners with Max Sullivan and Marlene.

At football games under Friday night lights.

On porches, in conversations, in everyday life.

I met neighbors like Bradley A. McClain who stopped by simply to welcome the exchange student. Teachers like Coach Bridge who encouraged me. Friends like Daniel Friend who never saw me only as “the German boy,” but simply as one of them.

That kind of openness left a deep impression on me.

American hospitality is not a cliché.

It is a way of being.

In high school I formed friendships. I encountered a country whose people approach strangers with a kind of openness that can seem almost naive to Europeans. And yet it is precisely this openness that is one of its greatest strengths.

America believes in people.

In second chances.

In new beginnings.

In possibility.

Perhaps that is the real American idea.

Not that everyone will succeed.

But that everyone should have the chance to try. Or two or three.

Of course, I have also seen the contradictions of this country. The political conflicts. The inequalities. A from an European perspective barely existing social security system, especially on healthcare. The tensions that have become more visible than ever.

To love America does not mean to remain silent about its flaws.

Quite the opposite.

Love does not mean ignoring mistakes.

But it does mean refusing to reduce a country — or a person — to those mistakes.

What troubles me is not criticism of America.

It is its one-sidedness.

Because anyone who sees America only as a collection of political problems has stopped seeing its people.

America is not its presidents.

Not its news networks.

Not its loudest voices on social media.

America is millions of ordinary people.

Teachers. Mechanics. Farmers. Nurses. Firefighters.

Mothers and fathers.

People who get up in the morning, go to work, love their children, help their neighbors, and welcome strangers to their table without hesitation.

That is the America I came to know.

And that is the America I love.

In the meantime, I have been fortunate enough to return twice with my own family.

There are few things more beautiful than seeing enthusiasm passed on to the next generation.

To watch my wife Anja Domke and our children experience the same openness, the same hospitality, the same genuine curiosity that once moved me so deeply a quarter of a century ago.

They now understand why I never stopped speaking with a deep love about this country.

When I think of America, I do not first think of Washington.

Not of the White House.

Not of Hollywood.

I think of a kitchen table in Indiana.

Of Stuart, Christy, Sean and Pat.

Of friends from high school.

Of Friday night football games.

Of open doors.

And of Johns and Tims from Nebraska or Ohio, who never sought glory, yet whose sacrifice still echoes today.

America is not great because it is flawless.

America is great because its history has repeatedly been written by people willing to take responsibility, to offer hope, and to welcome strangers.

This country changed my life.

Not through its politics.

Not through its power.

But through its people.

Happy Birthday, America

And thank you

For your friendship.

For your generosity.

For your freedom.

And for memories that will stay with me for a lifetime and beyond.

God bless you.

I wish we’d done better.

I remember watching the 1976 national fireworks in our house on Rosewood drive. They were amazing. The whole bicentennial season had been amazing. I would tell our kids to remember this, because they wouldn’t see its like again. They were six, four, and two--I’m fairly certain they don’t remember much of it anyway.

But I think I was right. They won’t see its like again.

Although I’m political enough to have absolute opinions on how we didn’t do better, much of what I feel is just that: opinion. Not that I don’t have facts to back them up--I do--but so do others who don’t agree. We use different sources, though, and our opinions are colored by our experiences.

On his Down the Road blog, Jim Grey published an essay this morning. Actually, he published two of them. I wish I’d written them both. Since I didn’t, I’m sharing the links here. I hope you take the time to read them. Read this one first: https://blog.jimgrey.net/2026/07/04/the-world-came-to-party-and-we-were-ready/ Enjoy it.

Then read this one: https://blog.jimgrey.net/2026/07/04/i-remember-when-this-felt-like-my-party-too/ Enjoy it, too. It is an indicator of where we are that I’ll admit the second one is my favorite. Because we are there with waiting weeks and even months for health care. We are there with a prescriptionwe couldn’t afford without the VA’s help. We are there with resenting Indiana’s “systematic dismantling its public schools.”

Back to 1976 ... no, actually, back to 1965, when I went on vacation with friends to Washington DC. On the 4th, we went to the national fireworks, sitting on blankets with a few hundred thousand other people. I don’t remember exactly where it was--it seems as if we could see the reflecting pool from where we were, but mostly I remember how it felt. How things looked. How I was so enthralled that this magnificent place was ours. I had clung to the term melting pot since first hearing it in fourth grade in Mrs. Kotterman’s classroom, considering it to be a perfect tagline for the USA long before I knew what a tagline was.

I’m still clinging to it. I still believe it. I hope we allow our divisions to melt so that we can come together in the way that was intended. With freedoms that don’t come at the cost of others, with cultural differences that allow us to be who we are, with whatever religion we do or don’t want. With respect for each other.

I still wish we’d done better, but I also have faith that we can. That we will before it’s too late. Happy 4th of July. Have a good week. Be nice to ... everybody.

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This is from 2023, written the week Gordon Lightfoot died. It’s very obviously dated, but as often happens, the feelings I had then are not. There have been more losses since I wrote it. Grief and memories are so inextricably woven that I’m not sure where one ends and the other begins. I’m thinking of my siblings today, and missing them all. Daybreak today was gloomy and damp and gray, but finding this again made me “praise with elation,” as the song says.

When I saw daybreak this morning--bad picture above--I thought, as I have all week, of Gordon Lightfoot. He passed away Monday at the age of 84 and the words of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” haven’t stopped playing in my mind since.

The church whose bell chimed 29 times the morning of the wreck rang its bell one morning this week, too, only it rang 30 times instead. Someone played “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes. Morning broke on grief and gratitude. I guess it always does.

What is with you, Liz, that you must continually write about loss?

Yes, those italics are quoting the voice in my head. But it’s not loss I’m talking about. It’s the gifts we are given on the way. The gratitude inspired by those gifts.

I love churches, old ones especially. While I haven’t attended that many of them, I visit them as often as I can when traveling. I worship when I’m inside them--worship being personal. Sometimes I just mumble thank you on the way out. When Duane was in Vietnam, I’d go into St. Charles--which was unlocked in those days--and light candles to plead for his safety.

Something I’ve learned about churches--whether you go there for years or whether you just visit--is that even when you leave them, you don’t love them any less. The gifts you receive within those walls stay with you forever. They give you things to pass on to others. No, not judgment, but tolerance and love for others and sharing.

I’m feeling melancholy today, because of losses and changes and how quickly daybreaks, rainbows, and sunsets pass. But then I remember there will be more. Morning will break again, rainbows will light the sky and Bart See’s barn again, and the sun will set with a light show that brings people to stunned stillness.

You learn many lessons with age, and you don’t learn a lot, too. You give advice when it’s not wanted, share your opinion when it wasn’t asked for, and you sing along with songs that are interwoven throughout your memory even when people wish you wouldn’t. Grief and gratitude share equal space in that memory.

I am blessed. I hope you are, too. Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.

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From 2011. Some things stay the same.

Webster defines a father as “the male parent of a child.”

However, when one parent is absent, the parent who’s doing the raising must fulfil both roles. Single mothers learn more about sports and changing oil and that time in their sons’ lives when they become walking, talking hormones than they ever wanted to learn. Single fathers attend more dance recitals, buy more clothes with lace on them, and learn the hard way to keep their mouths shut when their daughters are “becoming women,” since anything they say is going to be wrong anyway.

Father’s Day, a very traditional day, isn’t always that traditional anymore. Sometimes the fancy card goes to Mom instead of to Dad. Or to a stepfather, grandfather, or family friend. Everything is changing, but the things a father does still have to be done by someone.

Someone still has to play a thousand games of Horse under the basketball goal with the boy or girl who wants to be the first nine-year-old to play on the varsity team.

Someone has to chase the baseballs thrown or hit into the nettles down by the fence and talk the monsters out from under the bed.

And say No and mean it.

Someone has to sit on the bleachers through all kinds of weather and pretend the wind, rain, and snow are no bother at all. Someone has to drop off. And pick up. Repeat.

Someone has to lie awake and worry when kids are late, because lying there worrying will surely keep them safe. It’s part of the holding tight that someone must do. And the letting go.

Someone has to make the kid mow the yard and take out the trash and do the dishes even when it would be easier on the nerves and less time-consuming to just go ahead and do it and let the kid not learn about boring, day-to-day responsibilities.

Someone has to keep silent about hair that’s too long and skirts that are too short and pants that look ridiculous. To clamp down on instinctive disapproval of ideas that seem wrong but are really only different and new, yet still know where to draw the line. When to speak up and describe in graphic, parental terms what is meant by decency, common sense, and respect for oneself and others. To reiterate that No means No and First Do No Harm.

Someone must show children the miracles of sunrise, sunset, and the grass growing quietly in the spring. They must sit on the back porch with these children and listen to the stories of their worlds gone wrong. And that person has to know when to jump in and fix it and when to stand aside and let them cope. And learn. And sometimes suffer.

Someone must, at all costs, do their best to keep them safe, to take the pain, fear, and pride that fatherhood brings and run with it.

There are a lot of these people around. Little League parks and bleachers are full of them. They can be found underneath the cars belonging to teenagers and being the push power behind the swings at the park. They stand at the airport or carry too much stuff up too many steps to a dorm room when the kid leaps headlong out of the nest and wonder how it all happened so fast.

So fast.

It’s a long, hard job, but the rewards are boundless. Thanks to all who do it. Happy Father’s Day.

Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.

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My friend Nan and I were talking about poverty this week. Not the poverty that is a primary concern in the country now, but the poverty we both knew. Long after the Great Depression, but well before the use of social programs became even semi-acceptable.

What started the conversation, not that she and I ever need anything to start our conversations, was her saying she didn’t really bargain shop in the grocery store anymore and me saying I still did. It went on with me saying I really liked cheap cheese and she said she liked Tillamook. We agreed, though, that Aldi had our favorite cheeses of all, and she joined me in mourning the store’s departure from Peru.

We continued with talking about cleaning our plates. (Are we not the most inspiring conversationalists you’ve ever heard off?) She never had to as a kid--although her unfinished food would go into the fridge in case she was hungry later--whereas it was never a question at our house. If it was on your plate, you ate it right then at the meal, and you became very, very careful of what you put on your plate. Decades later, she and I are pretty much the same as we were then. She rarely cleans her plate; I almost always do.

While I admit to not always finishing restaurant servings because they’re often too big, or of taking the leftovers home because they don’t always reheat well, if it’s on my plate, I generally eat it.

I use house brands a lot--although not if their quality doesn’t hold up--buy tons of stuff at Dollar Tree, and will cheerfully drive across town to save a nickel a gallon on gas. I don’t buy clothes until I’ve checked out the offerings on the clearance racks. The idea of paying full price for anything makes me cringe. Signs urging me to buy one, get one free are clarion calls to my thrift.

I wore my Crocs flip-flops until they were so slick I fell flat on wet cement when I was wearing them. I still haven’t thrown them away. Surely someone could wear them. They’re not that dangerous, are they?

Because waste, in the kind of poorness I remember, should be near the top of the Deadly Sins list.

Nan and I have different views of poverty because we knew different kinds of it. Even when I try to pinpoint those differences, I can’t come up with a good explanation. Habitat for Humanity comes close. “Absolute Poverty is used to describe a condition where an individual does not have the financial means to obtain commodities to sustain life. Relative Poverty refers to the standard of living compared to economic standards of living within the same surroundings.”

Neither of us knew absolute. But there are many kinds of relative, too, and they can be like comparing a wicked uncle with a grumpy older sister. Just not the same.

The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” — Matthew 25:40

I have read over and over again where people have said they “didn’t know we we were poor.” I’m not sure how that happens. I’m not sure I fully believe it does. There’s always someone or something there to remind people of their financial status. I remember when students with reduced or free lunches were set apart from ones who paid the full price. Even now, people are insistent that food stamps shouldn’t be used to purchase soda or candy. Does someone stand there and toss things off the eligible list because they might be fun?

I have no solutions. Not one. I don’t know any answers, although I think part of the key is the government. Our representatives from all sides and in all levels of power are shameful wasters.

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” — John F. Kennedy

I pulled the trash bag in my office this morning because it was nearly full, and I replaced it with a sack from T.J. Maxx. The sack was the right size, cutting its handles when it’s full makes it easy to tie off, and it’ll make my box of trash bags last a week or so longer.

Is that cheap? If it is, I’m okay with that. Do I think learning thrifty things to do is a gain from growing up poor? Maybe. Do I think it was worth it? Nope. Poverty doesn’t come with positives, no matter what kind it is.

Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.

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N. N. Light's Book Heaven

Book Review | Patches of Red by Liz Flaherty, perfect for readers who enjoy seasoned romance, lake reads, and women's fiction

Title: Patches of Red…

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3 months ago · 7 likes · 2 comments · N. N. Light's Book Heaven

Sharing this here because I was so excited to get it today!

Have a great week from the Window!

This morning I have been thinking about Nine Eleven. About J6. About Ruby Bridges. About Black Lives Matter. About the KKK. About ICE. About war. About 60 Minutes. About the White House and its East Wing, the reflecting pool, a 250-dollar-bill, the Kennedy Center. About insider trading. About how many times I’ve been called names and told to go do impossible things to myself because I have both opinions--gasp!--and an intense dislike for the present presidential administration.

But wait ...

I’ve also seen people who think like me be unconscionably rude to people whose thoughts are far removed from mine. I’ve seen people like me be condescending and hateful to those of different faiths. Or those of no faith. I’ve seen people like me bundle the haves into an all-inclusive bundle of ne’er-do-wells just as they (you know the ubiquitous they, don’t you?) bundle the have-nots into another all-inclusive bundle.

You know the kind of bundles I mean. Spend some time on Facebook--no, don’t; it’s pretty much a waste these days--and you’ll see a ton of them.

• No one on public assistance works. They are all lazy, able-bodied takers.

• They (again with the they) don’t know--or care--how the other half lives.

• Christians are hypocrites.

• Muslims are violent, horrible people.

• Immigrants who enter the country illegally are violent, horrible people.

• Feminists are horrible people, although not always violent.

• I am a Democrat--you know what they say about Democrats.

• Many of you are Republicans--you know what they say about Republicans.

So, the list of things in the first paragraph that have been on my mind this morning? That was bundling, too, wasn’t it? It was, to quote my friends Merriam and Webster, a group of things fastened together for convenient handling.

But it wasn’t all Muslims on Nine Eleven. It wasn’t all Republicans on J6. It wasn’t all black people who promoted destruction to make their point. It wasn’t all white people who created the need for Ruby Bridges to be surrounded by security just to go to school. It’s wasn’t all Democrats who got rich while in congress. It’s not all Republicans who disrespect the First Amendment. It’s not all Democrats who don’t care a bit about the Second one.

It’s not everyone I disagree with who calls me names and invites me to do impossible things. To those who think they must, go for it. To those bloggers who come at it from as far right as I do from my deep lean to the left, by all means, keep doing it and allow no one to shut you up.

But tell the truth. Everybody. And stop the bundling. It doesn’t help anyone. It’s not accurate. It’s horrendously cruel. It is the gerrymandering of the human condition.

Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.

Buy me a coffee?

This is not new, but I’ve put in a fix or two to make it semi-up-to-date. Our 55th wedding anniversary will be Friday, the 29th. I still feel like I did when I wrote this. Like I did 55 years ago, only more so. Thanks for reading. Have a great Memorial Day weekend.

Our wedding anniversary will be Friday. “How many?” said my sister-in-law in disbelief when I answered the annual question.

Fifty-five years. He still makes me smile. I make him laugh. We irritate each other on nearly a daily basis. We have disappointed each other, but not nearly as often as we’ve made each other happy.

He can see the negative side of anything; I’ve never met a half-full glass I didn’t like. He’s music. I’m words. He loves TV. I don’t. I love cats. He doesn’t. He considers the speed limit a rule. I think it’s a suggestion--five miles per hour either way will work fine.

He’s the most law-abiding one, but we have laughed for years now about the time he took it upon himself to turn left on red at a corner in Logansport. While I have undoubtedly committed more and worse traffic crimes, I haven’t yet done that. According to the rules of marriage passed down by generations of women before me, I never have to let that go.

He’s a hero after invasive surgery to replace or repair his joints. He ignores blisters and cuts and all other sorts of physical trauma, but is laid low for weeks on end by a cold. I, on the other hand, would require a sick leave for a hangnail, groan at length when I hit my funny bone, and turn pale when I am approached with a needle. I also expect illness to come in, do its thing, and leave the same day.

We didn’t celebrate our anniversary on its day last year because I was still recovering from surgery, although I’d begun to feel as if I was milking it. I’m sure I couldn’t have vacuumed, but I was positive I could drive. He wouldn’t let me, though, and took me everywhere I needed to go. We talked in the car, laughed, remembered some things and forgot others. He went into the grocery store with me to carry out the gallon of milk and was surprised when the two things I needed became six. He didn’t want to use my Aldi reusable shopping bag in Save A Lot. He wanted to buy a plastic bag, but I try to use fewer of them. A lot fewer. How could he not know? We didn’t buy the bag, but we looked funny at each other. Surprised again.

Sometimes as we drive, our hands come together between us. We smile at each other and don’t say anything. We don’t have to.

We are so different. Even now, after living with each other’s habits for more than half a century, we fall back on saying, “That’s how I grew up.” Really? We’ve been together far longer than we were apart. Why haven’t we adapted? Maybe these haven’t been our formative years, but they feel that way to me. Life before him was okay, but life as I know it and cherish it has happened in the years since we met. It is the life with our kids, kids-in-law, and grandkids. Our life together is our wealth. And yet ... Don’t wipe the counter with dish towels. Because that’s how I grew up.

He uses white towels. I use colored ones. He rinses dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. I barely scrape them. There’s nothing new in this. We were opposites when we met and we still are. I’ve read a gazillion articles about opposites attracting. I’ve written a few.

In the scheme of things ... in our scheme of things ... they don’t matter. They don’t matter at all. He still carries the milk when I have a weight restriction. I still buy white towels. We have both said I love you every day for 55 years and counting. Is it automatic to say it? I don’t know. We still mean it--that’s what matters. Even when we’re mad, when the way we look at each other shouts the silent words “who ARE you?”

We’ll celebrate soon. We’ll go out to dinner and listen to music and drive home with our hands meeting in the middle now and then. We will remember and remind each other that every day is a celebration. These are the quiet days, as much appreciated as the ones that have already passed. In stillness, love still flourishes.

Happy anniversary, Duane. Love you more.

Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.

Not a favorite word.

It used to be, back when I was changing from staying behind when my brothers got on the bus to joining them when I went into first grade. They always let me get on the bus first, then studiously ignored me the rest of the day unless I got into trouble.

It was still fun when I went from elementary school to junior high, when we seniors went solemnly up the side aisles of the gym to the strains of Pomp and Circumstance on our way into the future. To this day, I wonder why the procession is slow and somber when it should be a dance, as fun and musical as the decorated tops of graduates’ mortarboards.

I loved being an adult, and transitioning to marriage and motherhood, to postal worker and published author, to being nana and retiring from the day job. Did I love every minute or even every year of it? No. Did I look forward to what came next? Oh, you bet.

I even like being old, although I don’t enjoy the memory loss or the physical changes that come with it. I hate being referred to as irrelevant and being thrown into a generality with all the other boomers. It is psychological warfare to insist we are all the same when we so absolutely are not. Just as people don’t like or deserve to be pigeonholed when they are young, it doesn’t improve with age.

As we have aged, my husband and I have begun to accompany each other to medical appointments so that the non-patient can be the designated listener. Sometimes, our daughter goes along, too.

It’s a good idea. She doesn’t miss things the way her dad and I do. She often adds to the entertainment value of sitting in ERs or consultation rooms. I am glad that she and her brothers and all of their spouses care about us. I’m even glad they have their own texting exchange that we aren’t a part of,”so we can talk about you.”

Because it’s necessary.

I wish it wasn’t. In the biggest, most painful of ways, I wish it wasn’t. We never wanted them to have to do the heavy lifting for us--that was our job, wasn’t it? At least, it used to be.

Not until earlier this week did I finally begin to accept this transition, although I knew it was there. Friends and I talk about it, laugh about it, and are forever grateful for our families. But the truth is we don’t like it. We don’t like that it somehow makes us less in so many ways. I don’t like that I allow myself to feel that way.

But this week a very personable and I’m sure skilled physician came into a room with test results. While he was friendly to my husband and me, it was to our daughter he spoke. He didn’t act as if we weren’t there, but he was obviously unsure of our cognizance. Unlike our regular nurse practitioner, who just adds another listener in the group in the exam room and talks to all three of us, he said, “I will talk to you, and you can tell them.”

She didn’t have to, because we could hear him, but it stung.

We will ... at least, I think we will ... go into summertime soon. Although it’s beautiful, it’s not my favorite season because I’m not a fan of either heat or humidity. But I love the transitions between all the seasons. When things green up in spring, bring vivid color in fall, and when winter downtime comes with the comfort of blankets and sweatshirts and lush cold weather food--those are my favorite times of all.

As long as we’re not talking about politics, I don’t want to complain in this venue. The Window has better things to do, but it’s important that all generations be respected by the ones who come both before and after. While some of them require more advocacy than others, we all need it.

When you start a sentence with the words these kids today, don’t end it with recriminations and name-calling. When you say when I was your age, remember that often the past is looked at through glasses that distort the actuality of the way things were. When you say someone isn’t relevant, bite your tongue and back up. That’s a form of advocacy that can make changes land easier, cushioned by respect.

Because we are all relevant, even when we’re in transition.

Have a good week. Be nice to somebody.

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"She looks in the mirror and stares at the wrinkles that weren't there yesterday..." - Chris Gantry

When she was young, before she had formula stains on her clothes or stretch marks or crows feet, your mother had dreams. In those dreams, she was a singer or dancer or writer or CEO. She wore designer clothes and her hair was always perfect and she had the kind of checkbook balance that dreams are made of. Her plans for vacation never included McDonald's or Motel 6.

For many mothers, there was a man in those dreams. He was always strong and handsome and intelligent and sensitive. He never forgot important dates, never left dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, never for one moment considered anything in life to be as important as the woman whose dreams he was inhabiting.

Sometimes there were children in the dreams, children who behaved well and wore miniature designer clothes that stayed clean. Children who ate their vegetables without complaint and did their homework without fail and who never watched tasteless television or hid dirty magazines under their beds. Even after your mother gave birth to these children (painlessly--we're dreaming here) she maintained her figure and her perfect hair and flawless skin that defied crows feet to appear.

Her home was a portrait of good taste and comfort. In her dreams its plumbing was never iffy, its windows never leaky, its floors never sloped and scarred with the passage of time. The furniture shone with the patina of quality and good wax. The beds were made each morning and the pillows arranged in the artful disarray the magazines make look easy. The house was even paid for.

It is said that dreams die hard.

Not for most of us. For most of us, they change rather than die. We wear what is comfortable and what we can afford, we have bad hair days and not-so-bad hair days, and time leaves its obvious footprints on our skin. Instead of glamorous careers, most of us have jobs we may or may not like but which help keep the checkbook balance in the black. Not the very black, maybe, but close enough to keep the wolves from the door.

The men in our lives are different from what we dreamed, as fallible and faulty as we ourselves are. Although on any given day, they will probably have some of the characteristics of the men of our dreams, chances are good they'll never have all of them at once.

Which brings us to the children of our dreams. Speaking for myself only, I must say that mine were not. If one of them happened to be behaving well, the other two probably weren't. They dressed okay, but were seldom clean at any point in time previous to their 12th birthdays, when they suddenly started taking two showers a day and setting up housekeeping in front of the bathroom mirror. They did homework spasmodically and subsisted on diets that even now the memory of makes my stomach clench. They watched, read, and listened to every single thing I ever didn't want them to.

They turned the house of my dreams into what seemed at times like a three-ring circus. There was no single day in which every bed in the house was made or every dish clean at the same time. The house has leaky windows and iffy plumbing and a few floors that would feel right at home on a ski lift. The patina on the furniture is marred by marks from compasses and baseball cleats and the rubber soles of size 12 basketball shoes.

There is nothing I would change. Nothing.

When I was young, I had dreams. Somewhere in the passage of time, those dreams underwent changes, but they all--every one of them--came true. I hope yours did, too.

Happy Mother's Day to us all, and thanks, Mom. Both of you.

Have a great week. Call your mom. Be nice to somebody.

Buy me a coffee...

Let’s talk about words--want to?

Doing what I do, words are important to me and always have been. I used to love that I could spell well because it made writing easier and got me at least one easy A in school. Along with the rest of my memory, remembering how to spell has kind of gone to the wayside, but I can often spot errors other people make.

I can’t edit my own work, but I can sooo easily pick out what editors have missed in manuscripts. I made every mistake known to womanhood as a mother, but right away spot what another parent should be doing with a recalcitrant child. I have made judgment mistakes in driving, but am generally unwilling to forgive the ones others make.

I think that might be a personality flaw. Or maybe a character one.

However, I started this to talk about words, because, while I love words, there are ones I dislike and wish the wrath of God to swoosh down and take them from our ... well, no, not our vocabulary, because it’s sometimes groups of words that cause the trouble.

Here’s a partial list of onces I don’t like. I hope you’ll share yours, too.

• “Do you know who I am?” said with great pomposity and a heated glare. (Correct answer: “Do I care?”)

• She’s only a bartender. He’s only an average student. It’s only trade school. It’s only from Walmart, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, etc.

• All of any demographic are violent, stupid, unskilled, dirty, narrowminded, entitled, hateful, mean, so let’s just hate every one of them.

• I’m not a racist, but ...; I’m not sexist, but ...; I’m not asking for special favors, but ...; I don’t mind helping those who deserve it, but ...; She has such a pretty face, but ...

• “I know how you feel.”(It must be admitted that I say this a lot, when what I mean is, I think I know how you feel, but I’m not you.)

In the interest of fair play, here are a few of my favorite word uses or combinations. Tell me yours, too. Mine have all been stolen ... er ... borrowed from other people, for which I thank them.

• good trouble

• she persisted

• “the surly bonds of earth...”

• hot damn

• you made my day

• no worries

• “I never saw a Purple Cow,

  I never hope to see one,

  But I can tell you, anyhow,

  I’d rather see than be one!” - Gelett Burgess

Making those partial lists wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, because there are too many glitches in how I feel about words. Snowflake, fairy, and some others are good words when they are used as intended, but when they’re used for the purpose of hurting or denigrating others, the original meanings are lost. That being said, a lot of people like them and like using them. Those words give voice to how they feel, just as most of the ones in my second list explain how I believe.

Words are so very valuable. The reason we urge toddlers to “use your words,” is that they are the bedrock of how we communicate. We need to teach them the right words and the right way of using them.

We need to stop hurting each other with this most powerful of drugs, don’t we? And maybe forgiving sometimes when it’s hard.

Have a good week. Use your words. Be nice to somebody.

P.S. In case you haven’t seen it yet, PATCHES OF RED is available for preorder. It’s Book 2 in the Harper Loch Series.

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My God, I love to write. I love to feel what writing makes me feel. I am so blessed that I get to have those feelings. And sometimes I wish I didn’t have them.

On opposite ends of the state, two people I love are in hospital rooms right now. For privacy’s sake, I’m not going into any kind of detail, but being in those hospitals, looking around the way writers do, gave me a through-the-window look at things I don’t know how to describe.

In a room is a patient who is very old. She is so fragile it seems as if you can count her bones through her skin. I think her earthly days are probably winding down. But her hair is swept into a silvery knot that draws into relief the structure of her cheekbones. Her daughter has put lipstick on her. When she opens her eyes, they are still bright, still smile when they see the children she’s loved all their lives. She’s still ornery when she talks to her husband or a grandchild cracks a bawdy joke. “She’s still there,” whispers a family member with tears in her voice. “How can she leave us when she’s still there?”

In a room is a nurse who has had a complaint issued against her and her department. I don’t know what happened. It is hard sometimes when you see personnel clustered around a computer screen laughing and talking and drinking soda but you can’t seem to get a little cup of vanilla pudding that the patient you’re there with might take a spoonful of. But I worked with the public; I know how hard it is from the other side, too, when you’re the one visible to the public eye but you really can’t dispense the vanilla pudding they need. It makes me sad because the nurse is tired and she’s done her best all damn day and this is what she gets. The family in question is probably tired, too. And frightened.

In a room a family gathers to wait while one of their number is in surgery. They may not be a close family, this may be the only time they gather in either the near past or the foreseeable future, but for now they are a unit. Laughing quietly. Saying, Do you remember when we...? and How long has it been? and We need to get together more often for reasons other than this. Life is too short.

In a room, someone hears bad news and even though it’s a private space, the sound of grief echoes within all who hear it.

People-watching is the greatest research tool of all in writing. I never realized until this morning that even when your writing voice is silenced by the happenings of real life, you’re still watching and absorbing what you see. And I feel so guilty because how can I even think about writing when there is so much else going on? When people I love are suffering? This is not about me, yet the writing voice still clamors. I still watch the people and write their stories in my head. I still hear the sound of grief and try to think of ways to articulate that sound.

So, today, regardless of how blessed I am to be a writer, I don’t like that part of myself.

Have a great week. Be nice to somebody.

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I was thinking this morning--today is Sunday, six days before you’re reading this--that I am being silenced. Well, not me, actually, but my writing voice. I remember the early days of essays, when I wrote for the Peru Tribune, it wasn’t always easy, but I could usually spill out a column in an hour. I didn’t have--although I should have had--a proofreader, and I think sometimes Jeff Ward didn’t edit what I sent in--and should have; he may have trusted me too much. Some of it wasn’t so good. But some of it was.

I am, need I say, looking for the good these days?

Well, I’ve found some.

Saturday: We went to Open Mic at Gallery 15, which we do once a month. Sometimes, although not lately, Duane sings. Sometimes, I read. Mostly we listen. We look at artwork on the walls, at the ukuleles on a rack, we talk to people. And sometimes, something unexpected happens.

This time, it was a little girl with a wavy long blonde ponytail and a pretty sundress, sitting on the stage with a ukulele. Her mother and her grandfather were there. Bursting.

If you’ve loved a child, you know all about bursting, when your heart just won’t hold still and you’re pretty sure it’s going to come right though your chest wall because you are so ... I don’t know ... proud, moved, overwhelmed, completely in love? Maybe all of those.

Sunday: I went to church, which was good. It always is, but some Sundays are just more. This one included Suzie Baker’s ham and bean soup. Then we went to hear one of the Three Old Guys singing with two other guys, and it was so much fun.

This week: We saw two of our five favorite grandsons and saw a picture of our as-yet-unborn great-grandson that showed his height is already in the 99th percentile. Judging by the length of his legs, I anticipate him walking at three months. (I might be wrong about that--you know how grandparents are.)

I have been so hungry for a steak, but unwilling to secure a mortgage to pay for one, but this week I had one when we went to dinner. I don’t know if it was worth what it cost, but it was a quadruple hit--it was good, I didn’t have to cook it, I didn’t have to clean up after it, and Duane paid for it.

We saw deer on the road every day that we left home and didn’t hit any of them no matter how bravely they dared us. The trees and the grass greened up right before our eyes. Wild violets lend little spots of purple velvet along the driveway.

There were stories this week. My daughter thought she’d run over a rabbit when mowing the lawn and was so upset that she’d killed it. When Jim went to look, he found the fur where she had indeed killed not a rabbit but a glove. I was so glad Kari, Jim, and the nonexistent rabbit lived to tell the tale.

When I should be working, I get drawn into the charms of YouTube. I’ve spent much of today with Celtic Thunder (I’m not sure how many times you can listen to A Place in the Choir, but it’s a lot.) I’ve also listened to the Avett Brothers singing at the Grand Old Opry, to James Taylor and Carly Simon singing Mockingbird, and to Rick Nelson’s sons singing Garden Party.

I’m old enough to understand that living in the past isn’t a good idea, but recalling days or moments from then is a gift it would be foolish to ignore.

More than that, sometimes writers ... okay, sometimes this writer needs to worry less about losing my own voice and listen better to others. Listening is a lesson we learn in toddlerhood and should keep learning as we go along, isn't it?

It’s Friday afternoon as I finish this up. It’s tenuously connected, isn’t it? As in hardly at all. But in a week beset with things that were hard to understand, hard to hear on the news, hard to accept, it was helpful to find the good when I went looking for it. I was happy to find something to burst about.

I hope you find it, too. Have a great week. Be nice to somebody.

Although, as I say below, I don’t know when I wrote this, I first published it on my blog three years ago. I was in pain, upset, and medicated. (If I wrote a poem, which I did, you can almost bet I was medicated. I’m about as poetic as a contents list.)

But today, I’m mad. Because the guy who’s out there destroying the country, who swears he’s a Christian, released a more ignorant-than-usual Easter message. I don’t know what to do with this kind of anger, so I guess I’ll just maybe let it spill over a little here.

Since I wrote it, the cottonwood I talk about has fallen, the grief over losing my brother is still deep, and there’s this dark and painful fury. These aren’t the kinds of things Percoset would help even if I had any, but maybe seeing blue jays will. Or watching rocking chairs full of cats on the front porch will. Or knowing, as a Christ-follower, that He is risen, indeed. Maybe the anger will move on to another place - Liz

I found this the other day. While I know when I wrote it, I don’t actually recall doing it. It was a rough time--the pain in my neck and shoulder was intense and I wasn’t in all that good of a personal place, either. It’s the only thing I’ve ever written that was ever influenced by...what, substance use? Although the Percocet was legal, and I took it comparatively sparingly, it made me as well as my writing voice different. Something I find odd is that I’m using this today to avoid writing about politics, and even in my fog, I wrote about them then.

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I thought I should try something different. Maybe a short story. Or a poem. Then I thought that would be foolish—I write good essays, but my short stories are suspect and my poems are nonexistent. So I just kept looking out the office window this morning. Thinking.

There he is--a bright space in a field of gray

Oh, there, a good first line for a poem. I may do that.

The clothespins hang discouraged and upside down on the line
Unused and unneeded on these days that slip inexorably into cool and damp and wind.
And gray.

I think, and talk, about memories a lot. It’s one of the joys of elderliness, that if you can’t bear what a day has to offer, you have only to remember another day, a good day, to get you through the hard ones.

Across the leaf-strewn grass, the cottonwood stands weary
Dead up the middle, but still growing and hopeful in the branches that surround the center.
It looks pretty with the morning sun on it
Dispelling the gray and lighting up the blue jay that dances among the limbs
Scolding in rhythm to a one-two count only he can hear.

I am on a Percocet high today, the pain in my shoulder and arm alleviated to an extent that I feel like dancing, too. I’m scared of drugs…all drugs…I worry that taking three Extra-Strength Tylenol as opposed to two, every five hours instead of six, will send me across my goody-two-shoes line into addiction. My fingers remain numb to remind me that the Percocet will only work for a few hours and that it’s a cover, not a cure.

I could dance for a little while,
Like the blue jay, chattering out against the gray.

I’ve watched the news almost nonstop this past week, wondering if the person I consider the personification of evil has finally gone a step too far for his actions to be accepted even by his loyal followers. I think of our country, of her allies, of her history, and am embarrassed by what she has become. I’ve always hated when people spoke of things in the past as if everything was all wonderful then. They are the ones who don’t remember that racism, sexism, and a raft of other isms were alive and well in the “good old days,” too. They are the ones who elected Richard Nixon. Twice.

I am discouraged. What I called a high from Percocet isn’t really—I understand that. It’s a fog that diminishes the pain for a while, but it’s still a fog.

Still gray.

Time moves on between the first dose of the day and the second. My arm hurts and a new ache starts at my wrist. Does hurt chase itself? I wonder, twisting my arm in all different directions in a vain attempt to find the right one.

Of course, it does. When you’re hurt, no matter how hard you beat it back and pretend all is well and smile great big, it crops up in a new place. A new face. Someone you trusted and shouldn’t have. Someone you loved and still do.

So you move around in search of a comfortable place
To dance on the branches
Like the blue jay in his glory
Finding joy.

It is nearly time for the second dose. My fingers are numb and there’s fear there. Other than three times in labor, when the rewards so outweighed the gasping entreaties for it to be over, I’ve never experienced unrelenting pain. It’s not the worst, but it doesn’t go away.

The branches crack and crumble in the wind, making music
For the bird to dance to
When it looks as if he will give up and retreat to the ground
He instead finds another limb that suits him better.

With a sigh of relief, I take the round white pill, hoping it will do its thing and worrying about taking them. Not because I sit in judgment of people who have addictions but because I don’t want to be one. While I’ve been curious about the effects, I’ve never felt a need to try them. Now, with pain chasing itself through my arm and shoulder, that need pushes at me. And I push back. I have three more days’ worth. That will be enough. It has to be enough.

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Have a good week. Find Joy. Be nice to somebody.