A good aunt’s influence

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Thanks for joining me for the second installment of “The Good Aunt” series. Today, I’d like to share some stories with you from the women I interviewed and from my own life about the role models our own aunts were for us.

There are as many different ways an aunt can influence as there are different types of aunts: free spirits and disciplinarians, great cooks and those who loved takeout, teachers, nurses, career women, homemakers, aunts who had children of their own and aunts who were childless, aunts who lived with us and aunts who lived many hours away.

Two of the women I interviewed spoke of aunts whose presents they always especially looked forward to unwrapping, because they knew it would be something special: a prized treasure from an exotic location or another piece of a special collection dear to that child’s heart.

One of my beloved great aunts entertaining me while my mom looks on

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Nature’s pragmatic lessons

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Last Thursday, I came home from my afternoon walk with my dog to find two rabbits hanging out in the yard. Because there’s a bit of Mr. McGregor in my husband and me, and because we don’t want rabbits setting up camp in our yard or eating everything in our garden, I let our dog try to chase them away (with me still holding her by the leash). One bounded away, but the other just ran in circles around a newly-dug rabbit nest. Deciding the rabbit might be a new mother, I took the dog inside and then stood at the front door to watch.

That’s when I saw it – a movement in the grass near the front walk, a dark spot rustling the grass. I feared it might be a snake at first and walked carefully toward the area. Instead of a snake, here’s what I found: Continue reading →

The good aunt

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Today marks the beginning of a new series on my blog. Each Monday during the next few months, I hope you’ll join me as we read the stories of women who don’t have children of their own and how they have created flourishing lives for themselves. (I’ll still post on Wednesdays with my usual fare about what makes life flourish: for me, that’s faith, music, running, art, gardening and books …)

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have children. That’s a story I’ll share with you along our journey, but not yet. Today, I’ll tell you a little bit about why I wanted to write this series and what you’ll find along the way.

But first, I want to wish my mother a happy birthday and a happy Mother’s Day. You may find it odd that I would do that here, in a post about good aunts, but if you knew my mother, you’d understand why it’s appropriate.  Continue reading →

Branching out

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In his preface to The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis writes of life – and its decisions – being like a tree:

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a river but a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good. (p. viii) Continue reading →

Celebrating trees’ gift of music

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According to the Arbor Day Foundation, National Arbor Day is observed the last Friday in April, but it turns out a lot of states celebrate earlier or later, depending on when the season dictates the best time to plant trees. I just learned, for instance, that my state celebrates the first Friday after March 15 (seems random to me). If you’re in a cooler climate, like North Dakota, you can celebrate with your state this upcoming Friday. Here’s a handy map that lets you see exactly when your state observes this day of tree planting.

Not realizing I had already missed my state’s Arbor Day, I spent most of this past Friday celebrating National Arbor Day by sitting outside enjoying music that wouldn’t be possible without trees.

Every year (or as often as possible), my husband and I go to MerleFest, a four-day music festival in the North Carolina mountains that has some of the best bluegrass, rockabilly, blues, country, folk, jazz music and much more. I haven’t traveled around the country going to different music festivals, but I simply can’t imagine one that’s much better than this for the caliber of music you’ll hear. The festival closed out with an almost two-hour set from Alison Krauss and Union Station. Need I say more about the quality and talent the festival organizers bring in? Continue reading →