Featured Short Story

“I had a bad day, Nana,” my grandson, Donovan, said to me on the phone once when I called him after school. He was only four years old at the time, and he went to Head Start.

“Why did you have a bad day,” I asked him. “Cause I couldn’t do nothing right at school,” he answered as though it had been on his mind all evening. “What did you do wrong, Donovan?” “I couldn’t do good on my speech,” he said.

I reminded him of all the incredible things about h...

My sister called and told me she was having some symptoms that felt like a heart attack. "What are you feeling?" I asked her. "I don't know, ” she said. “Something doesn't feel right. I feel anxious and my jaw is aching a little." I suggested she go to the emergency room. She argued, "But I don't feel any chest pain. I just wanted to talk to you about it."

"Sis, please trust me. Go to the hospital. We can talk after you get checked out," I pleaded. She said OK and a few hours later my niece called to say that she h...

“Trails are there for a reason, my husband always told me when we were hiking.  The high grass and wooded areas can be dangerous”. His warnings were usually confirmed by the posted signs that instructed people to stay on the trails.

The problem was that I had a hard time staying on the trail.  My curiosity of what I couldn't see compelled me to follow sounds that I couldn't identify.  Often I went off the trails to get photos of birds, such as, the Painted Bunting and the Scarlet Tanager soaring out of my camera's view int...

They were married for 61 years. He told us about their life together. He said he had to wait till he turned 18 before they could be married, but they had been together ever since, except for the 33 months he spent overseas during World War II.

There was another time when he had to take a job away from home, but he always came home on the weekends to be with his family. He worked and brought his money home, and told her where he thought it should go, and she took care of the their home and three boys.

They traveled together. He ...

The first time my husband received a cross over hearing aid, he was astonished when we stepped outside the doctor’s office. “Do you hear that,” he asks. “What?” I asked. “The wind,” he said. “I can hear the sound of the wind.”

Most people take hearing for granted until they lose it. My husband is deaf in his left ear due to a severe injury he sustained as a child. He lost much of the hearing in his right ear when he served in Viet Nam.

A crossover hearing aid is a hearing a...

The flight attendant stood at the front of the plane mechanically giving safety instructions for the flight. It was obvious that she could probably give those same instructions in her sleep, because she had done it so many times. Just like her, I had heard them so often that I didn't even look up from my magazine to see where the exit rows, the float cushion or the oxygen mask was located.

However, something she said caught my attention this time. “In the event of an emergency, the oxygen mask will drop from overhead. Put the ma...

My Christmas tree is still up. I know — Christmas is over and it's time to take the decorations and lights down and get on with life.

But Christmas isn't really over until after January 6th, the day when many Christians celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany from December 25th until January 6th. These days are a collection of 12 feast days beginning with Christmas day and ending after the revelation of the wise men. The revelation is called Epiphany or the unveiling or finding God in the flesh, (the baby Jesus in the manger).

There was a reason why suggesting a clambake for Thanksgiving in place of the traditional turkey and dressing did not go over very well with our children. I think it brought back memories of another Thanksgiving meal that caught them off guard.

Our three children were elementary school age when we spent our first Thanksgiving with their grandparents in Missouri. They lived in a big brick house surrounded by 10 acres of rocky land on a rural road at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.

My father-in-law had two ponds sto...

One of the best memories I have from my childhood is the time my mother read to me. When it was cold outside, we sat on the couch late at night with the fire blazing in the fireplace. I leaned against her shoulder and watched the lines on her face disappear as she used her voice to mimic the characters she read about.

She laughed and pretended to cry to make the story come to life, and sometimes in those moments, she looked younger to me. It was our special time together to read and talk about books. It could have been her ...

The little girl ran from one side of the waiting room to the other, almost tripping the adult walking by. Her mother tried to stop her, but the three-year-old ran out of her reach. When she finally got her back to her seat, she stood up and began jumping up and down dangerously close to the edge of the chair.

The frantic mother told the child to sit down or she would not get a treat when they left. It didn't work. When all other negotiations failed, the mother seemed to have had enough. She said to the child with exasperation; “...

From a distance you could barely make out the blurred image of two people moving down the road.  A police car with its headlights on low beam followed close behind them.

All of the other runners had already completed the 10K run and were sitting around the outdoor tables set up at the Valley Race Park eating lunch and drinking cold drinks. “We asked them if they wanted to ride to the finish line, the officer standing beside me said.  But they said no; they wanted to finish the run.”

I looked back down the road and ...

My husband was a cook in the Vietnam war.  One morning after praying for God's protection for himself and his fellow comrades, he felt he should go into the mess hall early to prepare his baking duties.  He had to convince the head cook to allow him do his work during the evening meal time. Normally, he started his baking after dinner and worked late while the soldiers stayed in the lighted building to do their letter writing and play cards. However, they all had to leave early when he closed the building for the night.

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