Oh, if the walls of our house could talk. A cliché I know, but really. What if they could? What could they reveal? Triggering Childhood Memories One of the writer’s notebook activities I used in the past with students to help generate memories is to draw the layout of a childhood home. In June 2020, I wrote about a fragment of time at our home in Grand Junction, Colorado. The house in Grand Junction on Belford Avenue is the first house I can really remember from childhood. My mom loved that house for the simple fact that it was in Colorado, the place where she…
Category: Family
These Houses – What Secrets Do They Hold?
An Introduction to the Houses Sometimes when I am driving familiar routes in town, I wonder about the houses and the memories those houses hold. There is one house in particular that I drive by almost daily. When I first started teaching (twenty-six years ago), the couple that owned the house would host fish fries every spring to bring together the faculty and administration from the school where I worked. I think I went to two or three, and they were always fun. The couple no longer lives in that house, but driving by it has caused me to think about the memories associated with…
PTSD Awareness Month
June is PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) Awareness Month. A recent Facebook post on June 1 by a former student/now English teacher, Veronica Echols Garcia shows a picture of her late brother. Roni (as I called her when she was my student) shared that she will post a picture of him every day during the month of June. She wrote, “I am going to call out a military member I know and ask you to check on one of your battle buddies who has been on your mind.” Her first call out was to her husband asking him to reach out to someone he deployed with…
Mother Moments – As I Recall
I had planned to work on and finish this post last Sunday (Mother’s Day), and get it published the next day, but instead, I spent the day as a mother should on such a day, and that is with my family. Consequently, I was thinking about just nixing this one, but I began revising and decided to go ahead and post it. These are but some brief moments I recall of being a mother. Being a mother doesn’t happen just one day a year, so here are some of my memories and special moments of… Being a Mother As babies so sweet, beautiful, and needing…
Twenty-Five Years Ago This Month
Twenty-five years is a long time. A quarter of a century. Having twenty-five years with a beautiful, sweet daughter is something to appreciate. Twenty-five years ago this month, my youngest daughter was born. The day she was born, I had labored all night and went to the hospital the following morning. Being my second birthing experience, I was much more at ease in knowing when to go. By 10:35 a.m. I held my sweet baby girl in my arms. When my oldest daughter was born, my Mom was my only family nearby. When my youngest was born, many family members lived close to us. My…