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The Fudge-maker
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost There’s not much about Halloween I like. I’ve never been a fan of the “dark side”. I don’t like costumes or weird make-up. I can hardly manage to keep my house décor up to the standards of the…
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What Dreams May Be
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost I’ve noticed a peculiar phenomenon when I wake up now days. For a moment time fades and five- or ten-seconds pass as I imagine I’m a still child in my parents’ home again. Then I come…
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The ‘Poor Me’ Remedy
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost On a dusty shelf of one of two bookcases in my bedroom is a worn three-ring notebook overflowing with random scraps of paper and a notable lack of organization. I’ve been adding to it for many years, usually…
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The Antidote for Tragedy
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost I started my mid-life teaching career as a substitute. I thought I could work a couple of days a week and kind of back into a full-time teaching job down the road. The local school district (not the…
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The Most Difficult Ascent
Home is the place where, when we go there, they have to take us in. Robert Frost My husband is fond of saying, “I always wanted our kids to grow up to be better people than we are. But do they have to be so damn much better?” Apparently they do. But when they were…
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Where the Joy Is
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost This summer Son #1 became a grandfather. He’s physically a big guy, about 6’ 5” with mountain biking muscles and a personality that fills every room he walks into. But for the last couple of months, he’s been…
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A Circle of Strength
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you i Robert Frost This week I forwarded a sweet article from the Washington Post to a number of women I love—mostly immediate family members (https://apple.news/Amxc6lmktR–Nlvw2wVYY9Q). It was about a wedding dress which each of eight brides in a single family had…
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A Time to Give and a Time to Receive
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost Sunday morning, we followed an elderly neighbor whizzing along the sidewalk in her motorized wheelchair enjoying the sunshine, and headed for church. As she came around the corner, she was stymied by an unexpected stretch of…
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A Good Zucchini Can Save the World
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost This week my 19-year-old granddaughter asked me what “that huge plant right at the front of the garden” was? Always alarmed at any threat to my garden, I asked, “Why? Is it dying?” “No. there’s a…
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Heroes Among Us
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in Robert Frost This weekend Utah celebrates July 24th–Pioneer Day. It marks the date that Brigham Young declared “this” (the Salt Lake Valley) as “the place,”–a safe retreat for the converts who were fleeing persecution in the East after practicing the…
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Mind the Gap
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost For Christmas last winter my kids got together and gave me a two-week cruise to the British Isles. As a veteran teacher of literature, it was an adventure I’d long looked forward to. We spent time in Ireland,…
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The End Game
Home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost Yesterday my three-year-old grandson stared at a large-framed photograph of a smiling little boy with big brown eyes and long eyelashes which has been hanging on my bedroom wall for many years. “I know who that…
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Cousins: The Ties That Never Fade
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost I have a lot of cousins. I was going to count them, but I got bored. There are somewhere in the range of 40—that doesn’t include 2nd cousins, a goodly number of whom I grew to love as…
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Thoreau and Me
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost We have five newly hatched baby birds in our barbecue. It’s not the first time. Several years ago, a robin squeezed through the tiny air vents on the sides of an old propane grill, which my husband had…
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The Job that Never Ends
Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. Robert Frost Sometimes if I awake suddenly during the wee hours of the morning, I think I hear my mother rustling around in the other room as she begins a new day. Then I recall that soon we will be…
