“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. Twenty-six years ago, my grandpa was in an airplane crash. Of the 16 passengers and three crew members, 9 people died. Fourteen more people were…
As soon as I walked into my apartment, I threw off my clothes and changed into sweats. I flopped down on the couch and turned on the television to watch the 2003 NCAA basketball tournament. It had been a long week and I was excited about an evening of pizza…
“Tell us your impressions about motherhood,” the cheerful instructor asked the group of new moms sitting cross-legged on the floor with newborns in our laps. A newbie to this mommy-and-me infant class, I greeted the discussion time each week with equal parts eagerness and apprehension. I desperately wanted to get…
Two weeks ago my family – including my husband and sons, my sister and her family, my brother and his wife, and my parents – descended on the greater San Antonio area to celebrate my mom’s 60th birthday. It had been a trip that was years in the making, with…
I was scurrying down the street last week when I found a misplaced letter. A gentle breeze had stirred, carrying the note across my path where it then fell into a pile of crumbled, wet leaves buried below the shrubs next to the sidewalk. I almost let it lay…
“Wait for me,” he called to her when they were children trudging through freshly fallen snow. She didn’t wait. But eventually he caught up. And they built elegant snow angels and elaborate fortresses together. “Wait for me,” he begged twelve years later when she fled their gloomy hometown and he,…