Click here for Part 1 Click here for Part 2 There’s a Gospel passage in which Jesus says no man gives his child a snake when they ask for a fish. It’s built in to our love for our children, this desire to fulfill their needs…and their wants. Whatever they ask for–the newest toy or…
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Feels Like Home To Me
On days when crisp fall fades to a dusk that chills the toes, I always think of home. Because on days like this, my house smells like baking bread. In the eighteen years that I lived at home, I don’t think my mother ever once bought a loaf of bread. It was one of those…
Read MoreI Miss My Childhood
On nights when the incessant traffic noise mysteriously vanishes and the sound of a dog barking echoes outside my window, I miss my childhood. My heart reaches back toward sight of the full moon rising swollen and orange behind rows of corn and the smell of burning leaves at the end of the driveway, burrowing…
Read MoreBoys vs. Girls
We (or more specifically, Nicholas) are enrolled in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which sends one book a month. The last two have been sibling photo books. “Big Sister, Little Sister” came first. I rolled my eyes a bit at the sight of the tutu/princess dress-clad girls, but yanno. Okay. It’s a cute book. In its…
Read MoreThoughts of Home
Time always moved more slowly there– Too slowly . . . we were always impatient. Come home from school and Mother’s in the garden– Waves as the bus pulls up in a thunderhead of dust, And later as the little white car rolls in. Always loud inside at six– The TV on and dishes clattering…
Read MoreScared To Death
I really thought that November had at last settled in, and I was about to take off on novel writing. And then came this weekend. I will spare you the details. Suffice it to say, it involved a stomach virus and everyone in the family. And book signings. And NFP class. And let’s just say…
Read MoreBeadwork (or: the origin of motherhood)
It hangs in the the closet, tucked in the back with all the other clothes I don’t wear anymore, flowing concert black and high school prom red… Like another of my blog friends, I, too, like to pull it out and put it on once in a while, as my mother did when we were…
Read MoreThe Work of His Hands
It is fall, and in the mornings now we run in the dark. I am beginning to see pinpoints of sky among the sycamore trees, and that wonderful smell of leaves giving themselves back to the dust from which they came is just starting to make its presence known…only a subtle whiff, as yet, but…
Read MoreMy dad, the TV star :)
Yesterday my dad was on KRCG news talking about cool weather and the corn harvest. It cracks me up to see him go into his “teacher” mode on TV, especially at the end of the clip, when he’s almost laughing as he answers a question that Mark Slavit surely expected to elicit a depressing response.…
Read MoreBlackberry Season
The summer we moved into this house (two years ago), I was working at the edge of the property, and I kept getting snagged on these huge thorn bushes. Finally I put on long sleeves and got the clippers, and I chopped them down three feet back into the rough. A few days later, my…
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Kathleen M. Basi 