Articles about Linda Sandel Pettit
This was a woman’s place — a somewhat glitzy, somewhat faded, somewhat cluttered nail salon. The nail techs were women – all from Vietnam, all petite, most with dark hair and all with lovely Asian features. From the tiny older woman with the lined face, her grey hair pulled into a tight bun at the…
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“I’m crying,” my sister, Laura, said, as she explained over the phone to the radio show host why she couldn’t speak. She was on Facebook livestream with Mojo in the Morning, a popular 95.5 FM Detroit-area radio show. Laura’s black puffer coat blended into the dark early morning; frost bitten with Michigan’s winter chill. She…
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Oh, break my heart Break open, wide, and vast and unlimited Break open, as memories Of loved ones passed Flood into and radiate Deep shadows. Oh, break my heart Embrace the flash of Love. On November 18, 2022, William Ronald Pfeffer, my late husband’s brother left this side of life. As I lit the candle…
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There is a space no longer than the blink of an eye, between event and reaction. It is there that all manner of sacred possibility resides. The person on the end of the phone had just launched a bomb targeted at my inner peace. I gasped out loud. Words of retaliation marched to the tip…
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Ever-green Awe “We can’t pick a Christmas tree until it sings to me,” I said. Incredulous looks. Raised eyebrows. Pained expressions. My dear late husband, Jim, and my precious current husband, Bill, share a few common denominators, and one of them was disbelief that I listened to trees to discover which one wanted to grace…
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“Try to enjoy this time,” my obstetrician, Dr. Arvin said. Her curly brown hair bounced against her cheeks and her eyes sparkled with mirth. Awaiting the birth of my first, and only child, I was almost two weeks overdue. Mirrored in her glasses, I saw my cream-colored belly, as big as a house. The exam…
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“I’ve tried to forgive myself, God, but I can only come so far,” I said, in a heartfelt prayer to an autumn sky heavy with rain-soaked clouds. I knelt beside the Rose of Sharon bush that I’d planted next to the house in memory of my father-in-law. Summer blooms of white and purple flowers had…
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I steered my car around a dark, forested bend in the road that ran alongside the Little Kanawha River. The 68-mile commute along West Virginia byways from my home in Millstone to my office in Parkersburg was as familiar to me as the back of my hand. Each curve was an intimate friend. Miles stretched…
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At his first sight of our Christmas tree, my 3-year-old grandson, Alex, said, “Oh, wow!” His gorgeous brown eyes were wide. Mickey Mouse winked on the chest of his grey and white T-shirt. His hand was clapped to his mouth. “It’s beautiful, Grammy!” “Look at this one, Alex,” his 5-year-old brother, Luke, said, as he…
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I’m moved to write a reflection this year, 2022, on each day of Advent, a season that ends on Christmas Eve. Two phrases are on my mind: “the hush of waiting” and “hope for finding beauty in the dark.” When my first husband, Jim, died in a car wreck on Christmas Eve in 1999, I…
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