Articles about Advent
Christmas presents, gifts of light, can arrive at any time of the year. They can even unwrap in a university classroom in July on a campus shimmering in summer heat. Before the age of 30, I yearned to belong. I didn’t seem to fit anywhere. I was too quiet. Too shy. Too intense. Too emotional.…
Read More...
Author’s note: Fiction is a mysterious mix of truth and imagination. I offer this fictional story in memory of my Grandma Sandel whose presence at my high school Christmas concerts meant everything to me. A silvery ribbon of soprano, my voice hung in the still air of the high school auditorium. A spotlight illuminated a…
Read More...
Our expressions were quizzical. We stared at an 11X14 white paper that had six squares on it, each drawn to look like a television screen. My late husband, Jim, and I were in Cincinnati attending a Reality Therapy workshop with trainer Bob Wubbolding. We had been instructed to create a story board – a visual…
Read More...
St. Hedwig’s Church was poised, expectant, still. My family, Ma, Dad, me, Laura, Carol, Michael, and James, filed into the church in a Polish neighborhood of Detroit for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. My father chose a pew near the high altar, and we scooted into the row between the creaky wooden benches, the rock-hard…
Read More...
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…
Read More...
“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…
Read More...
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…
Read More...
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…
Read More...
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…
Read More...
“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…
Read More...