By Cheryl Calvert, with David Anderson “Your mother is not going to recover. Not this time.” I stood outside her hospital room as the doctor confirmed my worst fears. We had had our last conversation. I would not hear my mom’s sweet voice again. Her bright eyes would not recognize my face, her so sweet […]
Letter: On Becoming a Princess – Eat Your Peas
At three years old she hated peas. Especially a side-dish of just peas and only peas while the rest of dinner was being prepared. As if somehow peas placed alone on a separate plate should be therefore prized? By a three year old? Nope. No matter what her mother said or did she wouldn’t eat […]
Letter: Pair Up – in Rowing, In Loving, In Life
I needed a distraction to block out the anguish as I rowed that early morning on the ergometer, an instrument invented I think for torture, certainly, the cause of a great deal of lung-excruciating pain. As I strained against the machine, gasping for breath, sucking air, mouth gaping, legs burning, I saw her. Though the […]
Letter: A Love Story – The Walled Garden
Sir David Lindsay of Scotland married Isobel Forbes. The same year that their daughter Margaret was born, Sir David’s dearest treasure, his wife Isobel, died. The year was 1598. Perhaps it was because of his so great a love, and because of his so great a loss, that Sir David built in the years following […]
Letter: Escaping Maintenance Mode in Marriage
The guy pursues, promises, purchases, and plans but once the ‘prey’ is procured, the portrayal of himself as Prince Charming becomes rather alarming over a period of time. Romancing is no longer intriguing, dating is replaced with maintaining, and life becomes rather mundane, a pain. Dr. Seuss wrote of such a condition which he called […]
Letter: A Tragedy, A Locked Gate, A Buried Key
“The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911, would be judged “one of the best children’s books of the 20th Century.” It began with a tragedy, a locked gate, and a buried key. Such is life is it not? That which could have been, should have been, becomes what might have been. “Grief,” someone said, […]
Letter: What Does Your Heart Say?
“Like many authors battered by the continual rejection of a manuscript,” L.M. Montgomery placed the worn novel in a hatbox where it “would languish in a freezing attic for nearly a year,” according to the “Literary Ladies Guide.” But then the day came when she held in her hand for the very first time the […]
Letter: These Two
One of them used to eat all the raisins out of my Raisin Bran. She still eats all the carrots out of my salad. The other – I don’t know what she eats – but how did she get to be so tall? Seems like yesterday we were nose to nose but only because I […]
Letter: Because I Love You
One year ago today, May 24, I wrote an article entitled “Hearts On A String.” It was about my wife, who I had lost to cancer just two months previous after 50 years of marriage. That Valentine’s Day was to be our last. When her oncologist told us our journey was reaching the end, the […]