Nothing. When I woke up yesterday, I decided to do nothing. After a packed and scheduled week, I rationalized that I owed it to myself to do nothing. I almost succeeded. To do nothing, I soon found out, I had to do something. I could not just lie in bed with my eyes shut. Keeping my eyes shut was doing something. They naturally open when I’m awake. And my ceiling is a usual boring ceiling, so to try to do nothing doesn’t work when your mind automatically tries to find patterns in a patternless ceiling. Beside me on the bed, lay reading material I’d purchased last week at the Calvin Faith & ..read more

Who or what else could M be for? None other than my late husband. Especially since I’m writing this at O’Hare on my layover home from Michigan. It’s about a 3000-step walk from where we landed to the distant concourse and gate that will take me home to SD. I’ve picked out just three of the photos I’ve taken along the way that reminded me of Marv. When we lived downtown Chicago, we’d take the pedway under our building to catch the Blue Line (el) to O’Hare. We often traveled United so we’d first encounter the psychedelic moving walkway above. I’d take the walkway and Marv would walk alongside a ..read more

Spending three session-packed days at the Calvin Festival of Faith & Writing has left my body buzzing as though I’ve eaten an entire chocolate cake and washed it down with a pot of caffeinated coffee. From this sentence, how would you describe what this conference was like for me? Dull? Boring? Waste of time? Or energizing? Stimulating? A heady overload? Anthony (Tony) Doerr, author All the Light We Cannot See, wound up the Festival tonight talking about how smilies and metaphors can enrich our writing and enlarge our stories. Since these don’t come easily to me, I’ll attempt to explain m ..read more

Being back in Grand Rapids, MI, this week elicits several feelings of kinship–an appreciation of similar origins. Like visiting my sister-in-law, Kay, yesterday. We are the oldest and youngest of my sibling clan, and the other eight have passed away. So a special visit for sure. Then stopping at my parents’ cemetery yesterday brought tears. And driving around my old neighborhood in a south suburb, remembering friends, neighbors, and classmates. I have no extra time to see them this time, but just a drive around tugged at my heart. I even landed on the street of the home of my first date! Don’t ..read more

Here I am with two of my sisters, Rose and Esther, during happier times. They have both passed away. It was Rose, as an experienced widow, who told me when Marv died that I must find joy in my life every day. She said Joy would not come looking for me. I must look for it myself and not just when I felt like it, but every day. That was good advice, Even on a down day, I’ve always been able to find something to be happy about. Or thankful for! Yesterday, my joy was visiting my parents’ gravesites in MI and my one remaining sibling–my sister-in-law, Kay, (I’d add those photos but don’t know how w ..read more

I is for I as in me. I may have begun to learn that I must curtail my traveling a bit at 82. Yesterday I endured an 11-hour day flying day with one nearly three-hour layover at O’Hare. The day included three gate changes, including a concourse change, at O’Hare, a $24 lunch of a large meatball with three strips of bread coated with melted cheese, 7000 steps at O’Hare alone, and a one-hour delay while already boarded for a tire change before taking off for my final destination. Happily, my rental car agent was pleasant, my hotel desk person not so much, but then my IHOP server very, very pleas ..read more

Participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge This week I’m at the Calvin Faith & Writing Festival. Calvin College (now University) is where I met my late husband. In this poem, Mary Oliver speaks about grief and laughter, both of which are present in a widow’s journey. It’s been almost six years since Marv died, and I know he’d be happy that I’ve mostly moved on to happiness and laughter. I will think of him as I walk the campus, even though Calvin is on a new campus since the sixties. I’ll also be thinking of my sister Esther Van Zytveld. Esther passed away at this time in 2 ..read more

Participating in the Blogging from A to Z in April Challenge Just when I think I’m on a break concerning finances, on my way to church yesterday, a fraud alert dinged on my watch. The watch face is too small to read, especially when I’m driving, so I planned to check my phone once I got to church. After parking, I opened my purse to get my phone. Not there. How did I forget it? I didn’t want to ask myself, because that would have threatened my self-confidence all day. I was already feeling incompetent. I told myself, No problem, just wait until you get home from church. Your phone is probably ..read more

Participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge After 1000 hours of gut ache, my taxes are finished…or at least until my CPA calls me to tell me what is missing. Last week: I get back from AZ and think doing taxes will take me one day. I have copious notes and several spreadsheets from my numerous years (6) of taking over my late husband’s job of handling the finances. I find the hard copies of the notes and spreadsheets. I go to the computer to make a 2024 version of the 2023 spreadsheet. I open Word and hunt. And hunt and hunt. No luck. I’ve already sorted out the documents I know ..read more

Participating in the A to Z Blogging in April Challenge I did everything I could do yesterday to procrastinate what I had to do: taxes. First, I turned off my alarm at 8 and went back to sleep. My body is still clinging to AZ time. I woke up for the second time at 10 with a phone call from my daughter. She was walking her girls (don’t you dare call them dogs) for one of her daily walks. She aims for and reaches 10,000 steps a day. While she talked, I could hear the chilly wind in the background. I burrowed deeper under my comforter to stay warm. After about an hour, I sleepily told her that I ..read more