Last summer we stumbled on a bluegrass concert in the square of downtown Fort Collins, Colorado. Our three kids migrated toward the front of the crowd to dance with the other children to the banjo, mandolin, upright bass, and guitar music.
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All articles filed in relationships
Friendships
I have two best friends. One of them I met on the first day of advanced English class in seventh grade. We quickly became inseparable and what could have began and ended as “just” a childhood friendship has instead led to more than three decades of love and laughter, grief and loss, stories and inside…
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Prodigal Love
I was sitting at a desk that had been my husband’s, his Cross pen-set gone and the walls now void of his credentials and degrees. The circumstances that had unfolded in the months prior were difficult, to say the least. Mark had resigned and was engaging some much-needed Sabbath rest, and I had said yes…
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Unexpected
In the night, when I return to bed after a bathroom trip (thank you, menopause) my husband will often turn and touch my hair before we both go back to sleep. And if he returns from a trip, he adjusts my bed covers. I smile. There are two pieces of my life I usually don’t…
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True Love
Growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Detroit during the 1950’s and 60’s, one couple stood out as being different from the rest of us and to my mind, they were very exotic. Unlike our other neighbors, this couple had no children and the woman worked in an office downtown. The man was Hollywood handsome…
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Graduate
I lay on the grassy hill, my legs bent up behind me, my chin resting on my hands. The voice of my friend on the phone is so young. Much younger than her years. We are chatting about current events that trigger young places in her lovely yet trauma-filled life. I’m listening carefully. I want…
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Back to each other.
I grip the steering wheel of the parked car, working up the nerve to cross the lot and enter the bar. The doors of my jetta hold me in. I can stay here forever, till I choose to spill out and into whatever the night holds. Already, the setting sun floods the scene before me,…
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Well-Armored
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal….Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket,…
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Guard your heart. Love never fails.
We were having friends over for lunch and each room looked pleasing. A few days earlier an interior decorator came and one of the things she said that our home needed was more texture (throws and pillows), height (stacking objects and books on coffee tables) and more interesting bookshelves. Last night we began watching the…
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Thawing Love
By March, the worst of the winter would be over. The snow would thaw, the rivers begin to run and the world would wake itself again. -Neil Gaiman I feel a piercing pain in my chest as I talk with my friend Libby about the inevitability of weaning my daughter Charlotte. My body begins to…
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