Come Home

 

 “Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul” (Psalm 66:16).  

 

     I couldn’t fall asleep the other night. That never happens. Wide awake, I couldn’t tell if God was readying me for what would happen in the near future or if He was calling up my past …or both. The pieces started connecting. Not much of my childhood remains in my memory, and I have no particular family history to draw from.

      My father and his two brothers were adopted (without their sister) by a couple who divorced. His biological mother left them, married another man, had five more children, then killed herself, all before the age of 27. My mother was an only child of sharecroppers. Her father was killed when I was 4 years old, and her mother died when I was 24.

      Not from one grandparent did I ever have a talk about the Lord, not aunts, not cousins. I had no sisters and no Godly friends. We went to church, but I don’t remember any Christians who took an interest in me.

      It might not have helped that we moved when I was 8, 9, and 12. From Alabama to North Carolina and finally to Georgia, we wound up in an affluent town below Atlanta where I immediately “fit in” and we “fell out” of church. I was already sneaking out at night before we moved there that summer. By fall, I was pregnant after having sex for the very first time. It was terminated at a clinic in Atlanta. There isn’t a lot to remember from that experience; it’s a quick, impersonal in and out, hush-hush except for the one remark I never forgot, that my pretty eighth grade PE teacher might know from where my doctor’s excuse came.

      I was par for the course after that, high achiever by day, life of the party by night. By the time my father left home when I was 15, I had been with as many young men. I remember confessing to my flabbergasted mother. My confession was some of the only evidence of the decision I made at the altar when I was 9 years old.

     When I was 16, I met my husband at a graduation party. He was drunk, and so was I. We went out the next night, got drunk again and had sex. For whatever reason, he wanted to stay around and before long said he loved me. I remember the day I told him I loved him. I shook all over.

     We decided we’d get married as soon as I graduated. My parents reluctantly agreed to pay for it. So, rather than on prom and senior parties, I spent my time planning a wedding at no less than First Baptist Church.

     The first week of marriage I was introduced to porn. I had come across it years before and never gave it a second thought. But this time it took, not that I wanted to see it as much as I wanted to be it, not a porn star, just to possess sexual prowess.

     Two months later, I started college in downtown Atlanta and landed a position at the National Archives because of my father-in-law. In four more months, I was not faring well on the birth control pill, and my husband got baby fever. When I thought I was pregnant, a classmate told me about a women’s clinic where I could get tested. After I tested positive, it was exactly then I realized I was again in an abortion clinic. They did all they could to convince me, although I was married, that I was too young and had too much in front of me to carry a pregnancy. I remember sitting in class afterwards, dumbfounded at such advice, dumbfounded as my mother was when I told her I was pregnant again.

     The pregnancy was uneventful, except for my husband’s first kidney stone attack, until I found out after the delivery that I had dormant herpes, thankfully not in an area that would have complicated things. I went back to school after I gave up on breastfeeding at 5 months. I was late to class most days watching her through the one-way glass. Then one day her shoe fell off, and she was going from worker to worker for help, but they were all busy. And that was it. I knew I had to have her home with me. I started night classes at a satellite school. When I finally decided to quit for good, I didn’t tell my mother for six months.

     I sold make-up and worked on the weekends in the office of a nursing home. That was a mistake. There I was with a little time on my hands and an attractive man checking in now and then. I didn’t plan for anything to happen, but I didn’t plan for it not to either. It finally overwhelmed me, and I did the reprehensible by having him in our home while my husband was gone.

     Six months later with our marriage in shambles, my mother-in-law insisted we go to a Christian counselor and paid for it herself. My husband went one time. But I went back, and one evening there alone, my counselor asked me if I was saved. I must have given every answer under the sun, so he finally asked me what would happen to me if I left the parking lot and was hit by a dump truck. That was it. That’s all it took. I broke down. And I surrendered to my Lord.

     I can’t remember the exact sequence of events, but a few months later I decided I needed to confess my affair to my husband. When he got home from work, I told him I had to tell him something. I think I remember his head on my lap. I definitely remember his leaving as an emotional wreck then returning home after having been to his mother’s. She told him that I had changed. And that was that.

      I took our first born, Megan, to church on Sundays. And I still needed to work if we were to keep the house his parents helped us buy thinking I would graduate from pharmacy school one day. I started a home daycare. For the most part, I had great kids and was able to stay home with my Megan while my husband worked second shift. He often brought home friends who played cards and drank. I had a book called “Beloved Unbeliever” and tried to see the best in the situation, that he was home and not out with the guys.

      We decided to get pregnant again, and taking care of everyone else’s children was no longer conducive. Then, my husband had a brainstorm to open a brick oven pizza take-out place. He convinced a friend from high school to endeavor with him. They set up in a good location and got up and running. It was good pizza, too good, I guess. They couldn’t keep up with the demand. His partner quit, and an employee threw him under the bus for something he didn’t do and reneged later, but it was too little too late.

     In the fallout, my husband returned alone to the camp where he was baptized as a child and was baptized again. His hope was renewed. He had signed up to join the 88 Mike as a Motor Transport Operator, which he had gone to school for. It was not to be. He was hit by a car that ran a stop light and had to have knee surgery.  

     In the meantime, I had another healthy baby girl but at home this time. On purpose. We had hired a midwife, who also happened to homeschool. I had heard about it from a friend. But the midwife gave me information. I bought the Charlotte Mason series but never read more than a few pages. I did go to my first home school conference though, at Truett Cathy’s church no less. I was mortified by how many choices there were. I gratefully landed on Ruth Beechick’s material and bought Schoolproof by Mary Pride. Then, I made friends with a home schooler who gave me the best book I ever got, To Train Up a Child by Mike and Debi Pearl.

      My husband got a job as a dump truck driver where he met another driver and decided to go into the trucking business. It wasn’t long before they had seven tractor trailers and I was pregnant again. And he was drinking again. He was driving one of the trucks and was out of town when I went into labor with our third daughter. I was on medication to accelerate healing from my herpes outbreak when I began to deliver three weeks early.

     We had picked a midwife who was with a doctor, thank God, so they were ready for me at the hospital. But not really; we found out later that the doctor was in no big hurry to get to the operating room. Yes, herpes outbreak means automatic C-section. But I was in active labor. It was as close a call as it gets.

     So were my husband’s decisions to go beyond the law and not only when he got a DUI. When he thought he might have to serve time, he panicked and said he was going to end it. He left the house with a gun and said he wasn’t coming back. I remember being on my knees in front of our bedroom window pleading with God.

     My husband came back and with a pregnancy test. He knew I thought I might be pregnant again, not on purpose of course. No one would do that after having had a C-section three months earlier.

     There were no charges, and he decided we should move. So we did. We were headed for Maine but stopped to see family in North Carolina and stayed. We rented long enough to put up a mobile home on his uncle’s property on the Blue Ridge Parkway. He worked for another uncle. And we had our first son. But the past caught up with my husband. I recall sitting with a one year old on one leg and a baby on the other, talking to him through the visitor’s glass at the county jail. 

     Miraculously, he was given probation. For 20 years. He got another tractor trailer and set out to pay the restitution and before long was hauling other trucks, the Cadillac of trucking jobs. We decided to have another baby. And it was another girl. He made a lot of money, bought his mother’s inheritance but lost it before we could build on it. The timeline is unclear to me now, but within a couple of years we were in a three story house on the other side of the county, tucked away in the mountains where it snowed every few days in the winter. I loved it. But I always knew we’d have to move because it was bought under false pretenses.

      What I didn’t know is HOW it would be lost. Five years after the fifth baby, he asked me, in a precarious position, if I wanted another. He always said I was happiest with a baby on my lap. He was right. I got pregnant in May again, and he bought a pool membership. He was gone a lot and very distant emotionally and often erratic. And there was a very attractive man who thought the same of me. We actually “made it” through the summer, but my error was in accepting the membership our insurance paid for to the pool he moved to when the summer was over. One occasion alone was all it took. We didn’t go the distance in the condition I was in, but some things that shouldn’t have happened did.

     I heard a sermon that night that was meant for teenagers but spoke straight to me as it literally resonated through the gymnasium. I was scared and ashamed out of my mind and let that be known to the other man, in no uncertain terms. And that was it. It was over.

     I enjoyed a healthy pregnancy and one afternoon was helping the family load three truck beds of firewood. I had compression stockings for varicose veins that had been developing since my second pregnancy. But one leg had bound up behind my knee and begun a blood clot in my inner thigh that by the end of the week reached my groin. I immediately became a high-risk pregnancy and was assigned two self-administered blood thinner shots a day while on bedrest.  

      Before our perfectly healthy, 10 pounds 3 ounces, second son was born, my husband was in a head-on collision. It was only when he was homebound in a wheelchair and our daughters found porn while they were cleaning his truck that he confessed not that he was distant because he was seeing someone but that he had been on meth for 4 years. I was destroyed, not from the drugs, but from the porn. I was his porn. I was with him almost anytime he asked, 3 times a day when he was home sometimes. And apparently even that wasn’t enough.

      What was I going to do? Leave a man in a wheelchair having suffered his fate already? And with a brand-new baby and five children in tow? His parents stepped in as they had so many times and loaned us the money to get by for several months until he could get back on his feet.

      What happened the following couple of years is still a blur. But on a good day, he asked me if I wanted one more baby?

And there I was pregnant for the 4^th time in the month of May. We had hoped the blood clot was a fluke. But by half-term, I had already developed another large thrombophlebitis, inflammation of a blood clot, which called for bedrest, blood thinners, and automatic induction again.

     Our last child was not born before her Daddy suffered not one but three aortic aneurysms as complications of his 14^th lithotripsy, breaking up of kidney stones. There I was again with a new baby and an injured husband. He was flown to Baptist Hospital and endured a half-day surgery to replace his abdominal aorta and upper iliacs with Kevlar.  With a loan from my parents, we managed to hold onto the house long enough to sell it. This blog post recounts both the gory and glorious details: https://morethanjustliving.blogspot.com/2013/03/resurrection-easter-morning-march-23.html.

(Originally written as some sort of intro in 2022 or so)

Persuasive

 

Michelle Harper

COM 231: Public Speaking

4/12/20

Persuasive Speech: Young Christian Women Willing to Consider Benefits of Being Stay at Home Mothers

Outline and Projected Audience

 

The audience is composed of young Christian women who may or may not already be married. The group is ideally actively following Christ and believes in the authority of the Bible. At least 50% of the young women are likely not convinced of being available to their husbands and children fulltime. The likelihood is that they have never been presented with the information quite this way. I am vying for the adoption method, that the young women will consider the evidence of the benefits of their fulltime presence at home. The setting is my own kitchen, and the familiar things seemed relevant to my persuasion of women’s being the centers of their homes.

 

I.                   Introduction

 

A.                 Icebreaker

1.                  Hi, my name is Michelle Harper.       

2.                  My age is 48.

3.                  I’ve been married 30 years.

4.                  I’ve been a mother for 29 years.

5.                  I’ve been saved 27 years and home since 1991 when I was a student at Georgia State University where I had an experience at the daycare and decided to stay home.

 

B.                 Now that I’m older, I’m charged by Titus 2:1 and 3 to speak sound doctrine as an aged woman teaching young women to, “be sober, love their husbands, love their children, be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”

 

II.                Clear Statement of Intent and list of elements: I want each of one of you to carefully consider not only obeying God’s Word but also the benefits for

 

A.                 Ourselves

B.                 Our husbands

C.                 Our children

D.                 The world around us

 

III.              Acknowledgment of opposing side: “I understand that society doesn’t encourage women to be ‘keepers at home’ anymore even though our families are falling apart left and right.”

 

IV.             Benefits for ourselves

 

A.                 Egalitarianism does not reduce the work burden rather doubles it according to Arlie Hochschild’s, The Second Shift.

 

B.                 We fail to realize the freedoms we have being homemakers.

1.                  The freedom to rest when needed

2.                  The freedom to be creative

3.                  The freedom to explore

4.                  The freedom of having only one male authority

 

C.                 “The home is the woman’s domain – her kingdom, where she exercises entire control,” The Ideal Life.

 

D.                 We self-impose a conflict of interest and time.

 

E.                  The truth is the job we do is of more value and adds more richness than anyone could ever pay us.

 

V.                Benefits for our marriages

 

A.                 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, of 9.5 million single mothers, only 8% were stay at home divorced moms. (Jacksonwhite.com reports that those fare well in settlements because of the prior arrangements.)

 

B.                 So, what do Christian men want in wives? Pew Research Center reports that of the men of the Millennial Generation, raised largely by single women often with feminist views, 93% picked “a good mother” as the #1 desirable attribute of a wife.

 

VI.             Benefits for our children

 

A.                 At the very least, we need to eliminate the risk of abuse and not leave our children with strangers.

 

B.                 We need to give them our first and best hours, not our last and exhausted ones.

 

C.                 We need not to expect our elders, who have done their work already, to raise our children for us.

 

D.                 A child is a gift. Why give anything but our greatest efforts?

 

E.                  The response to my recent, similar blog post was largely one of support from working women of my mother’s generation, maybe rethinking things.

 

F.                  Psychology Today says about “The Working Mother Study Report” authored by Harvard Business School researchers revealed instead of the advertised highlights that, “…early daycare is associated with better outcomes only for kids growing up in single-parent, low-income families.”

 

VII.           Benefits for the world around us

 

A.                 The History of Technology class at WCC reveals that home and children are so deemphasized that there is and international crisis of population shifts of age and that Russia is incentivizing births of children to correct the problem.

 

B.                 The ever-present issue of the environment can be helped by

1.                  Lessening daily commutes

2.                  Cooking, gardening, and preserving making fewer demands for prepackaging.

3.                  Living simply, needing fewer clothes, using cloth diapers, and nursing babies.

4.                  Decorating our spaces and for occasions with things from our surrounding rather than giving factories more to make.

 

VIII.        Closing

 

A.                 There can be a need or desire of supplemental income as there can be for a husband’s contribution of housework in times of duress.

 

B.                 I know personally women who have law and engineering degrees who have decided to give their families their all, rather than what’s left.

 

C.                 All is not lost: Gertrude Anscombe had 7 children and is considered “THE undoubted giant among women philosophers” in a detailed biography on actingpersonblog.wordpress.com.

 

D.                 I challenge you to BE WILLING to be available to your family.  – revisiting the original intent for adoption

 

E.                  You will have many questions. I have book suggestions including the one I am writing about my own experiences and lessons. – goal accomplishment

 

F.                  Thank you. And one day your family will, too, because Proverb 31:28 says, “Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also and he praiseth her.”

Covid 1

      I'm drained physically and drained emotionally. It took my writing it down to remember that's when Satan comes in for the kill. 

     I was aggravated when I realized one of our older daughters had come to the Christmas gathering visibly sick (not that I can say much after I let her sick, younger brother come to her birthday party). But it never occurred to me that it would be Covid and that their youngest sister and I would get a case of it that would wipe us out. Her sister does feel terrible about it and has since tested positive herself. Good news is we've all had it now, except my husband who has had the vaccine and two boosters. 

     I started coughing Monday and running a fever by that night. I was so sore that it hurt to take my bra off, like when I was nursing. I developed a miserable headache and cough for two more days, sometimes violently. I couldn't lie down without coughing uncontrollably. So, I sat up; they say that's better anyway. 

    Little sister's fever started a day after mine and didn't break until today, Friday. She had the head and eye aches but not much coughing. So, I gave her guaifenesin just in case, on top of vitamins C and D and zinc and nose spray. The humidifier has run for at least twelve hours a day, and, of course, we drank and slept as much as we could.

     The degree to which we had it surprised me. Even so, I thought I was recovering nicely, until today. I really don't feel good. Maybe I'm coming down from the holidays or the high alert of fighting the virus, or maybe I'm missing our new friends and know we won't see them or anyone anytime soon since we'll be quarantined another week. Whatever it is, I find myself crying pretty regularly.

     Slowing down is good, though. Being still and knowing that He is God is good. Maybe that's the crying trigger, that "My Life Is in His Hands," the Kirk Franklin song that played through my mind the first night I was sick, reminding me (with a hint of dramatic humor at myself) that, yes, He is in control for my good but who am I to assume I will get through this without complication?

     "Sitting still" lends itself to observations a person might otherwise not want to assess. Things really aren't much better around here. I still have and appreciate provision, protection, and direction but still crave relationship. I think it's okay to realize it and cry over it, but I can't stay in it, else, "But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing" (James 1:4) can't have its way in me. Satan would have me restless, discontent, and self-pitying. 

     I believe my past and my future are overlapping and that I MUST live in today, manipulating nothing. That's easier said than done and easier failed than won. It boils down to: do I trust God with my life or do I not? It's so simple, yet I give to God and take back so frequently. And here I go crying again, even though I'm told it's as easy as, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall have rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:28-30). Matthew, a book I can't seem to leave, only to flip back and forth to the Psalms.  

     Not going to the gym for the third week (beginning with a case of laryngitis followed by my period then Covid) surely has an effect on me, not that there aren't things I could do at home, if only I felt better. Fact is being prohibited from my usuals is probably the only way I'll slow down for spiritual growth. After all, I know very little about how things really ought to be or if I'm doing anything right at all. I know that I need to stop babying my 16-year-old son, permitting my 13-year-old daughter, and reacting to my 53-year-old husband.

      Just when I think I have it together, I'm undone before the Lord. Apparently, that's where I have to stay, 

       where we all have to stay.

(Originally written in 2022)

The Beginning of the End

      I'm sitting here this morning in the chair I found Melody Ann in reading her Bible the morning after Michael and she arrived. The empty table where we had Thanksgiving stands in front of me as I imagine each seat that was filled or unfilled and what each person has at play in their lives. 

     Michael, 24, had his basal joint of his thumb reconstructed on Monday in hopes that the damage from his football career won't be permanent. Despite excruciating pain, he came home, went and bought $40 worth of ingredients, and made his one-of-a-kind mac and cheese while keeping a constant eye on the turkey. 

     He and Melody have recently been reunited after her summer back in Canada where she spent time communing with a cousin strong in the faith (5 points). She's come back to the States with gusto to finish her senior year of college and cared for Michael before, during, and after his surgery.

     Macklynn, 17, has been away on football scholarship at The Lawrenceville School, a boarding school that's a feeder to the Ivy League. He has an ongoing battle in his mind of what to take on and what to give up. He was sick with bronchitis when he arrived there and promptly received yet another serious concussion in the second game he was well enough to participate in. Is football a help or hindrance to him? His brother has had several surgeries to repair football injuries (and who knows what injuries to his mind) but secured a good job straight out of college. The struggle, the volley is real.

     Melody, 22, pregnant, has very recently married Wes, 11 years her senior. None of us thought it would work, but they seem to be happier as a couple than any of the others. And McKala, 25, came alone with her 5-year-old twins. Oh, how we all prayed that their dad would come around to a right way of thinking, but he has decided that other things matter more. The divorce is to be finalized in two days. She showed up early on Thanksgiving Day to be what I called a "maiden," a helper to me in all ways but also left early so the girls could spend the evening with their father's family.

     Megan, 32, married to Jeremiah, 8 years her junior, is mother now not only to a 1 1/2- year-old little girl but also a 3-month-old baby boy, yet she prepared half the food at her house before bringing it over to ours. Her industrious nature means she's going to do things at home just as well as she did them on the job. 

     Madalynn, 14, with a fever of 102 was quarantined to her room. It may've been worth it for the 3 days of fun she had painting the set for the upcoming Christmas drama and lightheartedly running around the church playing games with friends. Lately, her heavy heart has resurfaced, so I count the experience a blessing for the temporary reprieve from her ordinary, daily routine. 

     Miranda, 28, the public servant, was doing just that and couldn't come. We didn't take a family photo for obvious reasons. She surely wishes she had a family of her own to take photos of, but she's working on herself and waiting evermore in hopes that someone else is doing the same. 

     Mike, 54, whom I should have started with but have more to say about, appears to have Intestinal Angina setting in, which is defined as pain and problems associated with eating causing significant weight loss because of diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting following meals. It's further described as slowing blood circulation from the heart's inability to pump blood efficiently causing the body chemistry to change from an alkaline state to an acidic one therefore beginning the shutdown of organ systems. (premierheartandveincare.com. 02/11/2019) 

     By all indications, the beginning of the end of Mike's heart failure has arrived here at the closing of the year. I know that I know one of the many reasons we were reconciled from the separation is so he doesn't have to go through this alone. And he's not going to because of and in spite of the fact that I am mortified at what this could look like for him. 

    And for me, 51, what does this look like? How selfish to even ask. Everything pales when compared to his misery that has ensued. My words cease here; so must the writing. 

(Originally written in 2022)

     

Last Night and This Morning

      It was 8 pm last night when I got a call from my husband to come watch a local band. I had just bought a new shirt and had a little makeup on, so I threw myself together and went. 

     It was at a bar. I've been to my share of those. I could see why he wanted me to hear the music; it was good, especially one particular vocalist. But what they were singing is not what I listen to anymore. He doesn't really either; he was just there for someone else's moral support and drank water the whole time, as did I. I didn't even want any alcohol. I didn't really want to hear the songs. But did I want to be seen? 

    I mean I can still walk the walk and turn some heads. It didn't feel as good as it used to, though. Now causing people to commit idolatry leaves a bitter taste. Watching them sink into their drunkenness disturbs the conscience, women older than I doing childish things, women younger than I becoming combative. 

     I listened to that music on the way home, danced in my seat a little and soon realized I was acting like someone I'm not. 

     So, this morning at church when the worship was particularly good and the message even better, I knew where my place is and no longer have any desire to return to the place I was last night ever again. There is nothing there for me, nothing. But there is everything for me in God's place, everything.

(Originally written in 2023)  

Hoeing

      I've been out hoeing on this unseasonably warm, mid March afternoon. Yes, you can take that both ways. A crude joke you say? An honest answer I give. Because if I'm not out doing one then I'm liable to be out doing the other. So goes the age-old battle of the spirit and the body. 

     Here in the foothills of North Carolina, the winter has been so mild that my onions, garlic, and collard greens have survived. Although from the store, I put on a pot of collards before I went out. There is a restaurant in the mountains that's known for them. A co-worker in the ministry my husband worked for took us there and had us over afterwards to watch "Shotgun Preacher." Not for the faint of heart, it's a true story of a man's conversion from an incarcerated criminal to a missionary to children of Africa. The same co-worker stayed with us a time or two when the weather was too bad to return home in the mountains from work here in the foothills. And same was the fellow who found my husband, Mike, in one of his lowest, perhaps the lowest, fits of despair and called for the help that put our family on the trajectory it's on now.  

    Collard greens: Hold the stem with one hand and strip the leaf off with the other and wash. When several are ready, put them on a cutting board and cut them vertically and horizontally. After the bunch is prepared, put them in a large pot with water halfway covering the greens. Add beef broth; chicken would suffice, but a hambone is best. I add garlic and onion powder. Of course, fresh is fine. Some kind of oil needs to be added. I use peanut. Most anything needs vinegar and sugar, and this is no exception. Dashes of hot sauce are a must, then salt toward the end of cooking them down for a couple of hours. 

    I also cooked red potatoes. I diced them up then shook them up in a mixture of steak seasoning, balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, and olive oil and baked them. I grabbed that idea when another coworker of  Mike's had us over for dinner at the house she bought after she lived with us for several months. She's since moved on but did innumerable thoughtful things for us while here. Most prominent in my mind are the times she took our younger children to have fun, once at a museum in the mountains, and then just our youngest daughter to a canvas painting party and to the mall. Oh, and I almost forgot the large sum of money she contributed when that lowest of all low moments came and Mike and I had to be separated. And my goodness, who can forget all the other donations that came in when Mike found out he qualified for Social Security Disability but had to wait several months for payments to commence. Never mind the volunteer my husband had befriended while on a deployment, never knowing that he had the financial capacity to carry us through five months of rental and utility payments. Why in the world do I doubt God's provision now?! 

     It looks like so far I'm kind of qualifying for 1 Timothy 5:10, "Well reported of for good works; if she have brought us children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, is she have diligently followed every good work." Unfortunately, I still have to read Hosea to see who I really am. 

    Tonight though, I shoot for Proverbs 31: 18-19, "She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth out by night. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff." Three ladies from the church are lending their time one Saturday a month to those of us who are less skilled at sewing. I'm becoming a regular Hester Prynne as I pursue the inspiration I had while sitting in the basement doing homework for the college my husband insisted I finish in order to take care of myself upon his demise. 

(Originally written in 2023)