Tag: family

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Love and Tenderness and Saying I Do

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt asks to tell our stories of love.

Perhaps there is no better day for this prompt than today, the day of the wedding of my college roommate and best friend’s younger daughter, Sarah. Stacey and Keith Jackson and their two daughters are friends who have been there through it all with my family, and ours with theirs. College, graduations, losses of parents, births of children, vacations together, my divorce and relocation to live closer them and then my remarriage (Stacey found the love of my life when my first attempt failed), kids’ weddings, and grandchildren. There’s been more love in this strong friendship than there is in many families. And this is why this day is so special and meaningful.

I left work early yesterday after a tough meeting, feeling drained and not knowing whether there was a single smile left in me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through the wedding rehearsal, hoping the headache I was feeling behind my left eye was not another onset of vertigo. I pulled through Chick Fil A and got a real Coca Cola, the one with caffeine, to try to help stave it off, and I did a few eye exercises the way I’ve been taught. I pulled up my GPS to get to Forest Hill Park in Perry, Georgia – – one hour and 18 minutes south. The sun was lowering itself in the sky on my right, and the chill in the crisp fall air with a few leaves beginning to turn tuned my heart back to the right station in my silent car. I wanted it that way after the long meeting. Silence is truly as golden as the sunset, and I needed to do all I could to calm my mind and shift gears back to what truly matters.

I turned the years back through my mind, to the days of helping my own mother, a pastor’s wife, coordinate weddings since I was 7 years old, the year I won second place at the local airport’s 1973 Christmas Flower Show only because she guided my hands and told me where to stick the greenery and each flower. She taught me a little about floral design, she showed me how she met with brides to prepare catered meals, she showed me how to use a hot glue gun and attach Galax leaves to an entire tablecloth when a bride wanted the venue to look like a forest with the huge cake sitting on that table, and she taught me how to be aware when the lights needed dimming or the train needed straightening. Her company, Elegant Thymes, offered the full package of wedding services, right down to the preacher and the church. Mom’s voice speaks and nudges quite presently from Heaven at weddings.

Just a few years ago, it seemed, Stacey and I were making table arrangements and bridesmaids’ bouquets for Sarah’s first wedding, and then using golf tees for attendant placement in my absence as I directed her other daughter Hannah’s wedding rehearsal a few years later from the road on my way to Pascagoula, Mississippi. Since I couldn’t get there in person for that rehearsal, I’d sketched a diagram and suggested using golf tees in the ground to help position the wedding party. It worked, and she pulled it off beautifully as I made my way in time for her to pass the baton to me for the big day. We have always worked as a team that way.

We didn’t have to use golf tees last night. I left work early enough to get there, meet the groom’s side of the family, and have a few minutes to catch up before the rehearsal began. There’s a steeple and an altar in the small park, and a covered bridge that brides cross to walk down the bricked path to the altar. The ladies get dressed in an old train car, while the men go into the old church-turned-wedding-venue and remain in their designated place until time to join two hearts into the forever kind of love everyone hopes to find someday.

Sarah and Brian have found theirs, and it’s as real and palpable, as certain as the sun setting behind the steeple beneath which they will take their vows this evening at 5:30. You see, this couple knows about commitment. Brian has two sons he and Sarah have committed to raising, one with severe Cerebral Palsy. The other, so polite and helpful, is his Best Man. From the time I arrived, I saw Brian making every consideration for his son in his wheelchair and for Sarah, who has a degenerative muscular disease and knows that his arm will be there for her every step of the journey ahead. What you or I might consider a challenge, they embrace joyfully and gratefully as their life —and they have committed to it and will live it together in love.

From this day forward. For better or worse. For richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as they both shall live.

Every wedding director knows there is no right way and no wrong way to “do” a wedding. We tend to start in the middle with placement, then run through the recessional, run through a processional, and then recess a final time to be sure everyone is comfortable. We remind the groomsmen to clasp their hands in front, bridesmaids to hold bouquets just above their waist so the pictures look great. We take note of the sun’s position and the weather report if it’s an outdoor wedding. Stacey calls it “herding cats.” We check with the bride on all decisions, and humorously but seriously remind the groom that the first rule of marriage is learning to listen to the bride, and that it’s all been practice until the wedding, and then it’s officially signed onto paper, so he’d better be ready. We all laugh.

But last night, the groom stepped in with his own request I wasn’t expecting. The walkway to the altar is on the right side of the chairs leading up to the steeple – there is no “middle aisle.” Brian asked to flip tradition and bring the bridesmaids to the right side, groomsmen on the left, to make it easier for his bride to navigate her journey to the altar. My heart melted. Why hadn’t I seen that??

I knew right then: he is THE ONE for our Sarah. Not only is he so completely in love with her that you can see it in his eyes every time he beholds her, but he is also tender in his care of her. He knows what commitment means, and his “I Do” is the forever kind that will carry his family forward through the years, into the togetherness that isn’t afraid to ask to throw out tradition when it comes to what’s best for them. God has winked in the most loving way on our sweet Sarah, on her groom, and on this new young family.

Commitment with tenderness, always self-sacrificing, is the truest kind of love there is, and I will be there with a Kleenex, grateful to be in the shadows of the trees back by the old covered bridge, directing the wedding of my truest-ever friend’s daughter and her new husband, ready to embrace life and love in a deeper way than most of us may ever know.

A Toast

to life

to love

to Sarah and Brian

as they begin

their new life

together

This will be the sun’s position at 5:30 today, Sarah and Brian’s wedding day, as they take their vows at Forest Hill Park in Perry, Georgia.
The flower show trophy from 1973 – my first training experience that prepared me to work by Mom as she coordinated weddings and events
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Spiritual Journey Thursday: Compassion

My father died June 13 after a long battle with Pulmonary Fibrosis, Colorectal Cancer, and Prostate Cancer. We are nearly four months into life without him, and yet the grief my brother and I have experienced has been an emotional roller coaster of shock, anger, and sadness compounded by the physical tasks of wrapping up his unfinished business and cleaning his house and seven storage rooms.

You read that right. Seven storage rooms.

Mom died ten years ago, and she’d been the glue. Once she was no longer here, his cord came unraveled. He would not allow others – especially his own children – to help him divest himself of his belongings, and he did not know how to handle these things alone – even though he insisted he did and promised time and again that he would.

Oh, how he was stubborn! He bought a car against the advice of the mechanic inspecting it (all because he’d lost the keys to the one he drove). He fired the housekeeper that his doctor strongly urged him to hire and keep after only one visit – reluctantly managing the hiring, but not the keeping.

We struggled to find compassion for Dad when he wouldn’t listen – and frustration lingers as my brother and I have had to bring our own lives to a screeching halt to try to clean up the mess he would not allow us to touch before school started back, which would have allowed a better pace and less racing against the clock to avoid additional monthly storage fees.

I’ll admit: I felt a certain smug satisfaction when a huge limb fell on his new car and knocked the side view mirror off, proving that the repair bills on that make and model would be far more than we knew he wanted to spend after he’d told us sternly that we were just wrong. I delighted in the concierge doctor who did more than suggest that the boxes stacked against the door of the guest room were a fire hazard and that the condition of the home warranted a housekeeper.

We came to places of disbelief, watching him do things no person in their right mind would do. Once we realized he wasn’t in his right mind, we developed what little compassion we could muster.

It was hard to feel compassion for our father, who seemed to be working against us at every turn.

Ephesians 4:32 says be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. How many times has God watched me make mistakes, deliberately and willfully, and then forgiven me with grace and mercy? I needed to extend grace to my earthly father the way my Heavenly Father has so freely offered it to me for 59 years. Even though compassion isn’t listed as one of the nine fruits of the Spirit in Galatians, I’m pretty sure it’s an offshoot fruit, like a secondary or tertiary fruit in the complete rainbow sherbet of spiritual fruits.

Feelings of guilt and regret emerged as we watched our father lying at peace in his Hospice bed, breathing machine as loud and obnoxious as an after-storm generator in a total power loss. I took photos of our hands holding his, so still against the backdrop of the snow white sheets. There was silence without peace, sleep without rest, stillness without calm in all the trademark ways that grief works.

I grappled with my lack of compassion when it mattered – and will carry some of that regret for the rest of my life. I was not as tactful and understanding as I could have been while Dad was still alive. But I take comfort that I held presence in those final weeks, burning sick and bereavement days at work to be with him. I invited his stories of the good old days, recorded them, and took interest in them. I offered words of thankfulness and pride in him, making our peace at the bitter end of a long road.

….still I wonder:

how far down the road

is self-forgiveness

and how does regret

over the absence

of compassion

get resolved?

I’m asking my Spiritual Journey friends for your stories and insights on compassion today. Please share your links to your blogs below. If you do not have a blog, please share your experiences and stories in the comments.

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Where Did you Come From?

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s question asks: Where did your family come from, and when? This question reminds me of the George Ella Lyon poem Where I’m From, and I’ll take that form today. I’m sharing the original by Lyon, and then I’ll follow with my own. You can read more about the roots of the idea here.

Where I’m From

I am from clothespins, 
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride. 
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening, 
it tasted like beets.) 
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own. 

I’m from fudge and eyeglasses, 
          from Imogene and Alafair. 
I’m from the know-it-alls
          and the pass-it-ons, 
from Perk up! and Pipe down! 
I’m from He restoreth my soul
          with a cottonball lamb
          and ten verses I can say myself. 

I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch, 
fried corn and strong coffee. 
From the finger my grandfather lost 
          to the auger, 
the eye my father shut to keep his sight. 

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures, 
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams. 
I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded —
leaf-fall from the family tree.

My chosen form is a rambling poem. I love the unexpected turns and the no-pause, no-punctuation stream of consciousness thinking in a rambling poem. Here is one that I wrote in 2024, with a few tweaks. My name, Kimberly, means Royal Fortress Meadow.

Royal Fortress Meadow 

I’m from the Royal Fortress Meadow 

from Breck shampoo and Johnson’s No More Tears 

from wispy locks of amber gold, windblown in the breeze

I’m from chain-woven crowns of wildflowers, dandelions, and daisies

from backlit sunlight exposing truth: there will never be no more tears

from churning butter in an antique churn 

I’m from ancestors of the lye soap cooked in the backyard

from the front porch swing and swigging Mason Jars of sweet tea 

from wash behind your ears and do a good tick check

from a don’t you slam that screen door one more time! flyswatter granny

who swatted more than flies

I’m from the country church of the cardboard funeral fans

with the off-key piano

I’m from Georgia, Cherokee blood three generation branches up-tree,

still searching for the bloodstained earth of my ancestors

from Silver Queen corn, husks shucked

from shady pecan groves and Vidalia onion fields

from Okefenokee swamplands and railroads

that side of the tree that tallied three pees before flushing

from clotheslines of fresh sheets teeming with sweet dreams

from sleeping under a box window fan in sweltering summer heat

from folks doing what they could to survive

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Have You Enjoyed Life?

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. The prompt today is inspired by a question in Brother, I’m Dying asked by one of Edwidge Danticat’s brothers of his father after he tells his children he has a fatal disease. Goldberg asks us to answer that same question, honestly – to do an honest assessment.

I’ve chosen a shape poem today, also called a concrete poem since it takes the form of a tangible object or symbol shape. So here’s a lamp to shed a little truth on the answer to the question today.

Shedding Light On the Subject

I’ll answer

since you asked

I’ve enjoyed life, sure,

but I’m gonna squeeze out

the pulp and drink the dregs~

I’m ready

to retire

to travel

to linger over coffee

to wear comfortable shoes

I don’t want to slide into home

like a lot of people say they do

oh no, I want to be a little old

lady shuffling in with

hardly a breath left

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You Need to Know This

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Begin the writing with “You Need to Know This” to complete today’s prompt.

Whenever we are anywhere and the Eagles ask that question in Take it to the Limit, we stop and nod. Yes, always.

They’re Singing Our Song

you need to know this:

if it all fell to pieces

tomorrow, I’d still

be yours, Eagles-style

taking it to the limit

my answer is yes.

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Don’t Ever Forget

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt is to begin the writing with “Don’t ever forget,” and to return to that phrase if we get stuck.

An Old Desk

don’t ever forget

the importance of a pen

and old writing desk

the kind with a felt

writing surface and hidden

compartments above

to tell the secrets

of those who wrote before you

sitting in this space

from their own corner

of the world they knew, not much

different from yours

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Open Write Day 2 of 3 September 2025

Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com’s Day 2 of the September Open Write is Allison Berryhill of Iowa. She teaches high school journalism and is a frequent host of amazing prompts in our writing group. Come read more about Allison and her full prompt here, as she inspires us to write a retelling poem.

I chose to rewrite my favorite childhood poem, Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro, as a Shakespearean Sonnet, a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, where the rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg, with ten syllables per line. Here is the original poem:

Overheard on a Saltmarsh

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?

Give them me.

No.

Give them me. Give them me.

No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds,

Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars or water,

Better than voices of winds that sing,

Better than any man’s fair daughter,

Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads, I want them.

No.

I will howl in the deep lagoon

For your green glass beads, I love them so.

Give them me. Give them.

No.

– Harold Monro (1879 – 1932)

***. ***. ***

Here is my Shakespearean Sonnet:

Nymphs Don’t Play

a goblin glumphed upon a marsh nymph fair

far through the pluff he’d glimpsed a glow of green

such beauty drew him to her, for to stare

pay homage to her globes he hoped to glean

nymph, nymph he glowered, sweetening his gaze

as moonlight cast a truth beam on intent

this young sylph, so accustomed to his ways

was not a stranger to his guileful glint

what are your beads that cast such radiant gleam?

they’re moonbeads, goblin, made of emerald glass

which thereupon his threat suddenly seemed

the type that beckoned kicking goblin ass

and so this marsh nymph, queen of her domain

unleashed unparalleled gonadic pain

-Kim Johnson

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Open Write Day 1 of 3 September 2025 with Kelsey Bigelow

Today’s host of the first day of September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Kelsey Bigelow, who works as a mental health poet and renowned author of books, slam poetry events, and writing workshops in Iowa. You can read all about Kelsey and visit today’s prompt and poems here, as she inspires us to think about what lives on the “good side of memories.” Today’s writing is rooted in stream of consciousness writing that can live on in that form or be the start of one that takes root for another.

It’s All in the Kneading and Knowing

the happiest thing

I’ve ever tasted was that moment

when in my grief

soul-gutting tears in a

big-enough-for-all

walls of a VRBO

reverberating sniffles

and crumpled Kleenex

and happy laughs of

oblivious grandchildren playing

with their newest cousin

trying to teach him

to walk at six months

and believing he could

the strains of Amazing Grace

sung to a guitar

by the rest of us trying

to sing with the best of us

believing we could

as we all sat piled high

on the curved couch

pajama-clad, remembering

*******. ********

then one broke the silence

asking for a happier moment

in the autumn – another together

time when smiles returned

then another added

yeah, when

any of us can

make a word from tiles in

turntable Scrabble

and another added

yeah, and only if Mom

brings the pumpkin bread

and right then

in those delicate moments

I knew three things:

that I had taken the reins

as the newest family elder and

that tradition of togetherness

lives on in food tried first

as a flopped recipe

when they’re toddlers, then tested

again and again to perfection

by the time they’re teenagers

and can’t think of gatherings

without it and

that families too

are like that ~

learning to walk

learning to sing

learning to bake

learning to live on

believing

through all the tears and laughter

that together

we can

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Broccoli

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt asks us to describe broccoli to someone who has never seen it before.

How To Save a Fairy

Imagine a miniature

forest with lush emerald trees

a canopy for fairies

sparkling magic beneath

but a foul odor

permeates the land

threatening the fairies

their twinkle-lights fading

in the putrid stench

then the wicked witch

steps from her lair

behind the twisted trees

holding her wrinkled green

fingers up grasping power in the air

her evil laughter beckoning

one brave fairy to come close for a deal

you love children? find them,

find those who will eat of the

foul-smelling trees that will

not harm them but will save you

and my noxious potion spell that will

kill you will only make them grow stronger

so the brave fairy

told the others

who told the birds

who told the woodland critters

who told the house pets

who prompted the parents

to cook all the miniature trees

we call broccoli

and feed them to the children

throughout the land

children in every house balked

but they ate the broccoli

to save their bedtime story heroines

from the evils of the wicked witch

and her foiled fairy fiasco

after dinner, all the mothers took

their pots of boiling broccoli water

to the edge of the woods and

slung the gut-churning water into the

forest, where the fairies watched

from afar and glowed brightly

as the screams of the witch

could be heard throughout

Fairy Land: “I’m melting! I’m melting!”

And that is why children, to this day,

will eat their broccoli – to save a fairy!

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Unanticipated Blessing

This month, I continue writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. I’m continuing this month so that I can experience the entire deck of prompts. Today’s prompt is to write about a doctor you know or one you went to – or their waiting room – or any memory in a medical office.

I always wanted children, and the dream at one point was to have a full quiver. I would have lived and breathed forever full time motherhood and had thought that would be my lot in life. When we found out the first one was on the way just a few months into marriage, arriving only one year and two months after our wedding day, much of the joy became worry about how we would make ends meet. But we welcomed our first child and found that we could make the necessary sacrifices for me to stay home after a trial run at working when she was 6 weeks old. When I tried to go back to work and leave her at a daycare, I cried all day there and all the way home. It was the only time in my life I’d ever been blinded by tears to the point I had to pull over and wait out the cry in order to drive. That evening, I gave notice and became a full time mother the next day.

the timing wasn’t

the best in the world to hear

the news: you’s pregnant!

I’ve never once regretted not working when my children were little, even though now I would be well into retirement if I had stayed the planned course. I knew that there would come a day they’d fledge the nest and take up with families of their own, but I didn’t want to miss those golden years of their childhood – so I took time on the front end of life and stayed home until all 3 were in school. And I cried in the primary school parking lot each time one started kindergarten.

Above all, in thinking of the prompt today, I can still remember the nurse in the now late Dr. Gregory Whitaker’s office in Savannah. She had short blond hair and was thin and friendly, and her Southern charm was reassuring and comforting as she read the result: yep, you’s pregnant!

I rejoice today for the individuality of my children – their uniquenesses, their strengths and interests, and what they have brought to the world. And I would say to any young mothers out there who aren’t sure how it will all work out: it will.