I didn't start gardening until I was 29. To be truthful, my husband started gardening when I was 29, and I became "gardening support." It all started with one sad, wilted tomato plant last spring, and ended with a freezer full of garden-fresh tomatoes, zucchini, and beans that fall. "Look!" My husband, James said. He had just come in from work, he was holding up a black, plastic pot with a wilted tomato plant that hung limply to the side. He was smiling like a twelve-year-old boy with a huge ...

Okay, so I was known to occasionally pop a thick, sticky wad of bubble gum into my mouth after scraping it off the underside of the table at Burger King when I was a kid. There were 7 kids in my family, and gum, candy, and fun cereal was always off the menu, so that's my excuse! I cringe to realize that my son (at 4-years-old) is getting ever closer to the booger-eating-gum-scraping-anti-bathing ages. Heaven help me! He is in the bathroom humor stage already (everything is "poop," and "pee," ...

Batting and poking in the dark at the alarm clock, Sam can't get it to stop buzzing. Tearing his eyes open, he sees the time blaring back at him in red: 12:42, not time for the alarm. The buzzing morphs into the ring of the telephone; he grabs it from the cradle. "Mmm... Hullo?" “Sam? Sam it’s me.” I said into the receiver. “Ben? It’s nearly one in the morning.” I could picture Sam eyeing the illuminated numbers on his alarm clock and blinking the sleep out of his eyes. “Yeah, sorry. I just ...

I was early for work one morning, so I stopped in Hillsdale, a tiny community in the West hills of Portland, to get a cup of coffee. Now, I am always one to support the little guy, like, I prefer to go to the neighborhood video store, rather than the local chain, and I would just as soon drive a little farther to go to a mom and pop, rather than the "popular" store, dubbed so by the hundreds of so called "popular" people walking around all consumed in the occupation of being, well, “popular.”...

The common belief held by most is that integrity is simply living life by the rules; whose rules, I have to wonder. For arguments sake, I will concede that, "the rules," consist of all of the rules about life (put forth by those whom I will just call society) that are innately good, and when seen living by them, people are considered (by society) to be good people. I will even go one step further to include the unwritten rules, as well as the common sense rules; that should cover them all, an...

When I was a little girl, I was physically and emotionally abused by my mother. I came to know Christ in Sunday school at the age of six (October 13, 1982) after hearing that “Abba” means “Daddy,” and that was what I wanted more than anything, a father. I began a relationship with Jesus that day that was not just in my heart, but tangible. Often, after abuse that was painful and scary, I would sit in the rocking armchair in my room with my legs across one arm, and my head on the other; with m...

I We moved a lot. I thought that moving was a part of life; we live a while, then we changed houses. I went to kindergarten in one school; I went to the first month or so of first grade in another, and I finished out the first grade in an entirely different town. By third grade I stopped going to school at all. I guess mom just got tired of the registration process. There was never really much warning before we were gone from a house. I think it was like a contest to mom to see how fast we c...

There are two things that I have realized about myself: 1) I want to be a perfect parent 2) I am not a perfet parent Trying to be the perfect parent can be a destructive process; since there is no such thing, it is a goal that can never be reached and as such I would either have to lie to myself, or I would have to beat up on myself for my inability to be perfect. I have to wonder what my biological mother wanted when she was younger. Before she had children, what kind of parent did she want ...

My husband, James, and I have been blessed with a three-year-old bundle of joy and energy. Raising our son, Benjamin, (also known to us as "Grover," the cuddly-est of all monsters) has been a series of ups and downs, and many adventures! I have recently had a bit of surgery on my arm, and while it was minor and I really am doing better, yesterday really seemed to be "just one of those days." First, though, I have to say, that since the surgery, James and Benjamin have been good sports about ...

Ghosts of Him By Rebecca Reece I was driving on the freeway. It was busier than usual for afternoon, and I was bored with the sluggish pace of the traffic. I was drifting in and out of my mind listening to music, but not hearing it, and making out recognizable shapes in the dark clouds that were rolling in from the coast. The clouds were splitting the sunlight into concentrated beams of bright white that hit the wet blacktop, making tendrils of steam that drifted upward; I watched the steam r...