A Novel Creation www.WatersWords.com

  The Little Garden   I come from a long line of farmers, so I usually plant a garden. On occasion it has been fairly large and produced enough to round out our meals with fresh veggies through the summer and supply us with canned or frozen veggies in the winter. Other times, when we lived in places where there was little room for a true garden, we planted a few tomatoes in our flowerbeds.   The year I returned from Kosovo, my mother had tomatoes planted near my deck for me to enjoy all summer. And I did. I picked a handful of those little “tommy toe” tomatoes every time I made a salad.   Because the new house where I live didn’t have good soil, my cousin found a couple of old bales of hay for me the next year and I planted my small garden in them.    During the pandemic, I planted a few tomato plants from seed inside and put them out in my makeshift garden when the weather was nice. I cut up some potatoes that had started to sprout, planted those and enjoy...

Unpacking Experience Do you remember your first day of school? You get home and someone asks, “How was kindergarten?”   “Good.” “What did you do?” “Uh…I dunno.”   Remember those conversations? You may have experienced them with your own children.    As a former teacher, I know those first days are packed with activity, new friends, and great stories. As a mom, I know it takes a while to unpack any of it.   I came to fully understand the child’s side of this conversation this past week. Following a visit with my family in Wisconsin, I attended the Write-to-Publish conference in Wheaton, Illinois.   “How was the conference?” my own sweet mama asked. “Good.” “What did you do?” “I dunno.”    I loved the conference. I met authors, publishers, agents, podcasters, and bloggers. There were new writers and those who have over a million books in print. We had music. We had food. We attended workshops and enjoyed great main speakers and programs.  ...

Perseverance, Character, and Hope  COVID interrupted everyone’s life. That’s a given. However, during the pandemic, my daughter, son-in-law, and four grandchildren moved from their small Cape Cod house seated on a postage stamp yard in Kenosha to a spacious home situated on a sprawling park-like two acre lot further north in Wisconsin. This summer I finally had the opportunity to visit.     It is always good to wrap my arms around my family. It was particularly comforting to be a part of the day-to-day life of my daughter and her tribe. I celebrated the end of school with them on Friday. We explored “The Domes” botanical gardens on Saturday. On Sunday I attended church with my sweet ones and met some of their friends.   We talked, played, visited, and walked. The grandkids took me on a tour of their backyard and we roasted marshmallows over the fire pit. Time together is a treasure. As my youngest daughter says, “It fills your tank.”   While visiting, Matthias, ...

Shoes Tell the Story of Our Lives   One of my favorite scenes in the book  Breathing on Her Own  is when Molly holds a pair of her injured daughter’s shoes. She hugs them close to her heart with the thought:   Shoes tell the story of our lives.    There is truth in that. I went out to my garden this morning wearing a pair of Clarks leather shoes I’ve owned for close to twenty years. I thought about that line in the book and considered the stories these old shoes might share.   They would tell how they climbed the steps and walked the campus of Cincinnati Christian University.    They would recount the days of waiting in the hospital for grandbabies to arrive or for the heart surgeon to come out and tell me all was well with my husband.   These shoes would surely speak of the wanderings around airports as my husband and I traveled to places such as France or Finland. Or perhaps as we walked the markets of Cairo.    These sh...