Let Me Tell You One Thing

Sheets have never been a particular topic that I cared to discuss with anyone.  I mean, sheets are sheets.  One sleeps on them, launders them, puts them on a mattress; they are just sheets, nothing more. I have begun to realize that even our sheets can become a complex matter if you are actually trying to shop for them.  I can remember a time when a sheet was sheet was a sheet.  You could buy them in colors, or you could buy them white.  I even remember a time when the fitted ones all came in twin, double, queen, or king sizes.  Sheets were not a major matter to contemplate.  It occurred to me as time went on, that the market place was filling up with sheets that only tried to confuse me.  I knew the size of my mattress, it was a queen sized one.  But then gradually shopping for new sheets became a thing of wonder.  I usually ended up going home and sleeping on the same old sheets even when I bought a new mattress because I was no longer sheet savvy.  Did I buy 200 thread count or

Around 1999, my husband had some surgery in a doctor's office in Savannah.  After the surgery, he was to keep ice packs on the stitches to get down the swelling.  We had planned to stay in Savannah for a few days and for some reason, I saw him carrying around this silver bucket when we would leave the hotel.  I asked him, "Why do you have the silver ice bucket my mother gave us for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary?" He said, "I knew I was supposed to have ice handy after the surgery and I couldn't find anything else to put ice in".  He dropped it soon after the surgery and broke off the silver handle and also dented the bucket up all around it. I was not too happy. For some reason I began to think about that silver bucket a few days ago, which I still have and which I still polish faithfully, and I had some thoughts connected to that bucket concerning what we do with our pain many times.  I am speaking about our emotional pains. I have found myself

After the busy Christmas season, and feeling pooped from standing on my feet for hours at the time, searching recipes, cooking, shopping for ingredients; I wondered what really motivates me to keep doing this.  My thoughts go back to the meals that our mother made for us down through the years.  My brother and I would bring our children to her house, our sister would be there also, but she didn't have children, and we stayed for a couple of nights, played board games, and smelled  mother's scrumptious recipes cooking. She always fixed different dishes and tried to make everyone's  favorite thing.  When all of us got around the table, a table that she had built herself that was sturdy and had benches, we would enjoy the works of her hands. There would be all kinds of cakes, pies, entrees, and breads.  She would say, "Paula, I made that special Olive Loaf you like so much."  I would just nod not realizing, in years to come, how much that would stand out in my m