Friday Tidings

I found this gem of a picture in my grandmother’s photo album. I was a young teen, trying to look much older. My insecurity made it hard to feel worthy. It seemed like everyone but me had their life together.   I felt safe at Grandma’s. She accepted every version of me that showed up each summer—even the teen who was doing her best to look older, but no wiser. I may have sounded self-assured, but I never fooled Grandma. Before I’d leave for home, Grandma always had me pose on the dock. The outfit? It was most certainly a self-chosen, star-bangled mess. I desperately wanted to look confident. But even in the sunshine, I was walking in the dark. Fast forward a few years, and I was on my own—an 18-year-old college freshman, scooping ice-cream and making deli-sandwiches to pay my bills. I had ditched the short-shorts and knee-high boots, and my new clothing statement was a full-length purple cape that I wore every time I walked across campus.  Perhaps my clothes were speak...

The word “Trificult” rhymes with difficult—and it’s a word my young granddaughter created when we were playing a game that was harder than just difficult—hence the need for a better word: trificult. Just because the game was trificult, we didn’t use it as an excuse to quit. Instead, we allowed ourselves extra chances to get it right. My granddaughter seems to enjoy the challenge of doing things just beyond her capabilities—the trificult things. But having extra minutes added to the time clock helps. So does the opportunity to try again, and again. While I don’t think “trificult” will be something she remembers a few years from now, I’ll remember how we found a way to work through trificult things with a better attitude and a little bit of grace. Maybe I’ll keep the word trificult in my vocabulary for those times I’d rather quit or worse, get cranky about life. Trificult things just need some extra minutes on the time clock or more chances to get it right. 

It’s coming—the weekend before spring’s official arrival. When I was a child that meant one thing: deep cleaning the whole house. The first step was being sent to my bedroom armed with a cardboard box and directions to fill it with old toys. This would be followed by a mandatory fashion show of every pair of pants, all my shirts, skirts, dresses, and blouses—anything that no long fit was put in paper sacks. Then the hard part—all closets, shelves, cupboards, and drawers were emptied, scrubbed, dusted, vacuumed, and windows were washed inside and out and left open so the house aired out. I was able to escape to the nearby woods to play while the wood floors were painstakingly waxed. As an adult, I never made spring cleaning an annual routine. But I will admit, that the singular weekend war on dust, dirt, and bagging up old clothes left an imprint. For me, instead of an intense weekend of scrubbing, it’s something that I do routinely. Oddly enough, I like it. Even if cleaning isn’t ...

Ask my kids and they’ll smile and shake their heads—Mom keeps things long past their expiration date. In my defense, I’ve gotten better with the stuff in the refrigerator. But as I was stuck by myself recovering from Covid, I approached my infamous medicine chest of doom. I was kind of embarrassed to look at the expiration dates.    It began when I thought some NyQuil might help my symptoms. Exp. 2012 clearly stamped on the box.   The winner in the oldest medicine in my arsenal, was nasal spray that expired in 1997.    I guess my tendency to cling on to medicines dates to Y2K when I thought civilization would come to a standstill and I might need those ten-year-old Advil’s.   As I threw away the old, expired stuff, I thought about some of the other things I’ve held onto—not in my cupboards, but in my head.   They say every problem we face has an expiration date—I can buy into that.   But what about the conflicts that never resolved? O...

It was February 1972, when the “Jesus-hippies” asked to visit our church. An invisible line had been drawn in the church carpet. Some of the congregation were adamantly against having the Jesus-hippies come with their beaded necklaces, peace signs, psychedelic-painted vans, and message of love.  Their music was too loud. The hippy girls with their flowing flower-power dresses and the long-haired, bearded guys with torn jeans, we’re too wild for the tastes of many in our congregation. “These freaks will ruin our kids.” The arguments continued. It seemed the hippies would lose. Then my childhood Sunday School teacher quietly affirmed, “You need to hear their message—it may give our kids exactly what they need.” Perhaps it was God’s poetic way of ending the argument—having the woman who had introduced all the church’s children to Jesus, speak words of reconciliation.  The hippies came and youth from all over town came to hear the music and the messages that followed. ...