Friday Tidings

The muddy footprints you left behind after breaking into my daughter’s home have been cleaned, the broken windows fixed, and t he insurance company will replace  many of the stolen items. But the jewelry box you grabbed held a special gold ring—a lovely garnet with two small diamonds on each side. You may not be interested, but those diamonds have a story to tell. My great-great grandmother squirreled away the money for them during a severe European depression.  No fickle currency for her; diamonds meant security. Eventually the family sought a better life in America. The diamonds sailed across the Atlantic in the hem of her skirt.  In time, she gave them to my feisty, hard-working great-grandmother—another woman born of steel. My grandfather secretly called her The Battleax—but he admired her courage in hard times.  When my grandmother married, she was given the diamonds with the instructions to ho...

Dressed in shiny black shoes, a flowered knee-length dress, white gloves, and a small hat worn atop her curly grey hair, she seemed to step right out of a 1950’s church service.  Widowed for over a dozen years, the elderly woman lived a solitary rural life. But despite the dated clothes, she knew exactly what her son was up to and it wasn’t good. Thus, her reason to visit us. Her son was our nearby neighbor. His life had been a zig-zagging road of challenges. Let’s just say that law enforcement knew his name and location. But he had a mama who loved him. She knew we’d helped him out a time or two. Now, she’d driven 80 country miles to see us.  She wasn’t asking that we give him money—but could we somehow encourage him and give him some hope? I felt sorry for this woman; she was far too old to deal with broken lives. She didn’t have the means to pay her son’s fines and bail—nor was she hinting that we should off...

There’s always plenty of New Year’s advice, but I gave my grandson the mulligan lesson. Dear O, This is my first letter to you in the New Year! Every year is a fresh beginning and every day is a new start. As much as you love sports, I thought you might like to learn something about a sport I played.  In golf, you can take a mulligan if you blow your first shot. A mulligan gives you a fresh start if your hit off the first tee is awful. It’s nice because your golf game doesn’t begin badly—you get the gift of a second chance. In life, we get mulligans too. Sometimes teachers give them if you do poorly on a test when they know you tried hard.  Sometimes coaches give you a mulligan when they see that you have what it takes, even after some missed shots.  Your parents are quick to give you a mulligan if you’re honestly doing what you can to help.                ...