About
stacks of books life
Vines Remind Us~~~
First, the wisteria taken from the neighbor’s broken fence
A stick pulled up, sheered of all leaves
Then stuck in the ground, took off like a weed
Into the rafters with abandon
Just as those challenges in our life
Reaching critical mass
We removed it from our front porch post
Sheered and stripped once again
Discarding a foreseeable problem
~~~
A clematis planted next at the front porch post
Blooming in spring, heavy drops of color
A purple once again yet non-aggressive
Attractive seed heads into blooms
To show again next spring
As we heal, preparing for new life
It did not survive over winter
As our child did, in compromise
With promise of spring
~~~
Then the tendril-bearing passionflower
Flowering purple and yellow
Herbaceous fragrance in warm weather
Such beauty reaching high
Bearing the passion of our present life
Unique, untiring, and constant
The passionflower will grow and inspire us
As the heat of summer springs forth
We will heal and thrive in its warmth
~~~
Those sprays of life so present
Remind us of our steady course
Vines gone and come again
New flowers come as new life comes
Vines remind us to find our way
To embrace and move onward anew
Our daughter, not fragile
Our vine blooms and thrives
A new vine for a new time~~~
What surprised me most about adult life was how busy it would become. My husband and I met and married in six months and had two children. My husband was diagnosed with a muscle disease, muscular dystrophy, and our daughter with a lung disease, cystic fibrosis. Both diseases were demanding; neither kept us from having a good life. Still, this all created something unexpected, stacks of books yet unread. Most days, I did in one hour what required two hours. So I’ve had a “stacks of books life.”
I became a writer out of necessity. I was a reading specialist who taught students that all writing has value, including their own writing. I wrote along side them. And then in 2016, our daughter had an emergency bilateral lung transplant spending four and a half months in an intensive care unit. I wrote every day and shared with the world through my writing, a real-time drama playing out with our very own precious daughter inside that hospital. Jackie lived. She is doing well. And I continue to write… some sad and some difficult, much happy and a lot humorous. All celebratory.
I invite you to enjoy my writing!