I have had a turtle as part of my family ever since I can remember.  They were always red eared sliders who were rescued.  We had a pond built for our last red eared slider and then she passed away.  She got to be the size of a large dinner plate and we could not buy a tank big enough to hold her.  I do not recommend them as pets for that very reason; they just keep growing and growing.  So when Sipokni died we decided to get two little Texas map turtles as part of our menagerie.  They are the smallest breed of aquatic turtle and males do not get any bigger than the palm of your hand.  I named them Pecos and Brazos.  They were rescues as well, as they were slated to be on the menu as turtle soup in Asia.  *shudder*  Their 55 gallon tank is roomy and they love to come out and bask like you see in the picture I took here.  I think this is Brazos; he’s slightly bigger than Pecos, just like the rivers.  I like to hear the filter running because it has the tranquility of an indoor waterfall.  One of our cats is always on top of the tank I suspect because she likes the heat lamp.  In Native culture, turtles are the symbol for long life and we all like having them.  They do not bite and are low maintenance.  When I look at them I am reminded of the American writer Bill Copeland’s words:  “Try to be like the turtle — at ease in your own shell.”  I think that is the very best place to be.

When I was in the fourth grade I made the Dallas Girls’ Chorus and our spring concert was in Caruth Auditorium at SMU.  Walking around the big center fountain that night I knew it was where I wanted to attend college someday.  And I did; SMU is my Alma mater.  I thought about majoring in music but my degree is in journalism with a minor in Native American Indian history and I was one class shy of a double minor in French.  It would be over two decades later after circling that fountain in front of Dallas Hall until I would meet the man I would marry.  Despite having known him almost ten years now we had never attended a concert together.  We’d been to operas (which he mostly struggled to stay awake through) and musicals (which I think he liked better) and, while this was not a concert in the rock band sense, I still hoped he might enjoy it.  Tonight the one and only Tony Bennett performed in the same auditorium I fell in love with as a little girl.  Walking hand in hand under trees grown more beautiful with the passing of time I thought about how fitting it was that we should be there.  I felt the same love for the architecture of the campus and spring hung heavy in the night air just as it did so long ago.  At almost 90 Tony Bennett has a powerhouse voice which has only strengthened with age and has been honed like a smooth whiskey that slides down your body, giving warmth and goosebumps all at once.  He was accompanied by a four piece band:  a grand piano, guitar, double bass and drums.  At one point he sang a cappella and with no mic.  That is when his perfect pitch, commanding projection, and raw talent really shined.  He has been quoted as saying, “I’ve been so fortunate because I never really had ups and downs as far as my career.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’ve been sold out all over the world.”  I am so thrilled he came to Dallas.  He looked more dapper than ever with his hand casually in his pocket while he held his mic next to his crisp handkerchief and crooned “Smile”, which I did not know was a Charlie Chaplin song.  My favorites were still “Fly Me to the Moon” and his iconic “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”.  He performed one hit after another effortlessly and without pause, not sitting or even sipping water for over an hour.  The stage was bathed in my favorite color dark blue and I took this picture from my seat after it was over.  Tony Bennett left it all, as he blew a kiss to the audience and then turned and simply walked away.  I went from “Rags to Riches” and once again I left my heart where I had done so all those years ago.  Only this time I was no longer a little girl, but a grown woman who got to experience the joy of introducing one love of my life to another.

When my mother first found out we were having a little girl she admonished me not “to dress that baby all in blue!” and she knew it would be a battle for me not to do so.  I adore dark blue.  It’s on everything from our duvet to our formal china.  My Christmas colors are dark blue and silver.  My entire closet is pretty much only dark blue.  I always wear the little dark blue sapphire cross I got when I worked at Lord & Taylor back in college.  For my little one though, it’s all about pink.  And I do not believe it is a passing fancy simply because she is a girl and she’s little.  She loves it in the same way I cannot get enough of blue.  I will never forget when she first started taking karate at three and, after earning her first two belts, she worked up all her courage to approach her master instructor.  She shyly peeped up at this big, intimidating man dressed all in black to ask if they had a pink belt in karate.  You could see him struggle not to smile as he gently told her there was not.  Recently I told her about local business great Mary Kay and how she would give away pink cars to her top salespeople.  It was in answer to her query about why there were no pink cars on the road.  She gravitates to pink like I do to blue.  I also notice we both favor the darker color as opposed to a pastel.  So when I bought her paints the other day of COURSE I bought an extra bottle of (washable — thank goodness) pink.  She was so thrilled!  “IT’S PINK!  IT’S PINK MAMA!” she kept saying as she was jumping up and down and sweetly saying thank you.  She has begun pointing out blue things for me just as I am always on the lookout for pink for her.  I grinned when I snapped this pic after I told her to please go wash her hands before supper.  Note the pink shirt (the pink hands I should think are obvious) with my blue shower curtain behind her.  The famous actress and humanitarian Audrey Hepburn said:

“I believe in pink.  I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner.  I believe in kissing, kissing a lot.  I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong.  I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls.  I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.”

I have always loved “La Vie En Rose”.  I believe my little one has, even at her tender years, already learned to embrace this.  So maybe a little pink rubbing off on me would not be a bad thing.  I think I shall add more into my own wardrobe.  Maris has already brought my whole life into pink.

Every time I see a lost animal I am reminded of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  I think of the first two who are too busy to stop and help.  I do not want to be that person.  Animals are family and I always try to catch runaways when I am able so they do not get hit by a car, wind up in the pound, or suffer some other tragic fate.  On this day I was driving home when this adorable little dog caught my eye.  I immediately stopped the car and she stopped running.  She had that wild look in her eyes that dogs get when they’re scared and lost.  I realize animal lovers tend to anthropomorphize pets especially but I believe she knew she could trust me.  She let me slowly approach her and gently pick her up.  By the time I’d put her in the back seat of my car next to my sleeping four year old she sort of passed out herself.  I brought her in the house (lifting her up from the sniffing wolfies so she wouldn’t freak out) and put her in our downstairs bathroom with a bowl of water which she proceeded to quaff.  Upon further inspection I noticed she had no collar and some hot spots which was disheartening.  I posted her pic on Facebook and other lost dog sites praying someone would message me.  I don’t know why I didn’t think to see if she was chipped.  A friend inquired if I’d checked and with a small ray of hope I asked my husband if he would take her to our vet to get scanned.  It turns out she had been missing for a month and had gone almost five miles.  I requested that her owner please contact me so I could try to help fill in some blanks.  She got to stay at our vet’s until her dad got off work.  Ironically, he had a job right across the street from their office!  Later that evening I got a call and, upon saying hello, this older gentlemen introduced himself as my “new best friend” — and then proceeded to cry.  He said her name is Puppy and kept thanking me profusely.  It was humbling.  The two of them are inseparable and she goes to work with him every day.  Each of them only has the other.  He thought I wanted him to call because he was offering a reward.  I told him I just got the greatest reward I could ever receive; they were reunited.  American actor Robert Wagner once said, “A dog will teach you unconditional love.  If you can have that in your life, things won’t be too bad.”  Some days are great ones; this was one of them:  Puppy lost and found.

Call me unsophisticated, but I have never cared for modern art.  Not only do I not “get” it; my soul derives no pleasure from it.  The pieces feel bizarre, disjointed and Godless; some even offensive.  If one confesses to not liking or understanding them they are pooh poohed and dismissed as unimaginative or prudish.  For me, art stops at Impressionism.  The use of light illumines my heart.  We have a mall in Dallas full of “priceless” pieces of “art.”  I can remember seeing them since I was a kid.  And I have always remembered something my daddy said once as we were walking by one of the installations.  There is a group of metal, two story men mechanized to perpetually hammer.  I have never cared for them and as we passed Daddy said, “If I did that they’d call me crazy.  Someone else does it and they get a million bucks.”  I thought he was so right.  Sadly, the art world seems to be going more and more modern.  The picture here was taken at the same mall and it’s the most normal looking thing I’ve ever seen.  It still doesn’t move me but I liked the lights.  It reminds me of a webcam.  Who knows what it’s supposed to be.  Frankly I don’t care.  I tend to agree with the Swedish feminist writer Ellen Key who said, “The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.”  And she died in 1926.  I suppose every era has had its critics.  They say the only constant is change.  I certainly hope so.

When I was four I had a Big Wheel I rode absolutely everywhere.  I remember Daddy got me this thing that sounded like a motorcycle revver for one of the handles.  I thought I was so cool.  Leap from 1974 to 2016; my girl fearlessly gets on her cute karate instructor’s bike without a moment’s hesitation.  I don’t know whether to be proud or terrified.  I got to sit on a real motorcycle or two in my day and I was always afraid the kickstand would collapse and it would fall over.  However I have fond memories of my cousin Michael taking me through the mountains in California on the back of his bike when I was seven.  It was the ’70’s so there were no helmets and I loved feeling the wind in my long, straight blonde hair and inhaling the scent of the pine trees as we blew by.  He went fast and I hung on for dear life.  I remember when he’d turn it felt like we were going to scrape the ground.  I was a good girl growning up and I didn’t do anything wrong riding that bike with my grown cousin.  But I know if Mama and Daddy had been there they would have had a lot of gray hairs from it.  Of course I realize motorcycles can be dangerous, particularly in the city.  But wow the joy of riding free through those hills and trees was something that has always stuck with me.  It was exhilarating and I was able to simply enjoy the ride.  Shortly after my husband and I got married we went around Christmas for our close friends’ wedding in New Mexico.  We decided to go snowmobiling the next day in Durango and I was so paralyzed with fear (I don’t like to ski for the same reasons:  heights and ice) he had to drive for us.  Burk was so confident and assured and I remember being so grateful he got us through.  I suppose we become more cautious as we get older.  American actor Johnny Depp said, “I think the thing to do is enjoy the ride while you’re on it.”  My little one did not really go anywhere, but I believe she did just that.

German-born American developmental psychologist Erik Erikson said, “Every adult, whether he is a follower or a leader, a member of a mass or of an elite, was once a child.  He was once small.  A sense of smallness forms a substratum in his mind, ineradicably.  His triumphs will be measured against this smallness; his defeats will substantiate it.”  When I was a little girl I always hated dresses and I particularly despised bows.  My mother and I finally made a deal after kindergarten:  I would wear a dress to make her happy for the first day of school and then I got to wear jeans and pants the rest of the year, except for church of course.  We shopped at Sears and they had this brand called Toughskins jeans.  If your kid could manage to put a hole in them you’d get a free pair.  My mother got about three a year on average.  I was recently dismayed to learn my much-more-femine-than-I daughter has been called a boy by other boys at school.  She always wears dresses but does, for the most part, eschew bows.  I adore anything French and I truly think she has a Rembrandt quality to her with her dark, French eyes when she wears them.  However this picture is the very largest bow we ever wear; I cannot STAND “bow heads”.  The poor little girls look like something out of Dr. Seuss — all bows, no faces, and (seemingly) no substance; just a big giant bow.  To learn they called my beautiful girl a boy hurt me and reopened old childhood wounds of my own.  I was a Tomboy and most girls were mean to me.  I do not want that for my little one.  I notice, like I was in school, she seems very popular but doesn’t really have any close friends.  My husband and I are both lone wolves (as were my parents) and I wonder if she’ll be the same.  She is fierce, independent, funny, kind, creative and brave.  I think she is drawn to the boys much like I was — not because she is boy crazy; rather she is just more adventurous.  However some of the boys are pushing her and hitting her.  My mother was the sweetest woman in the world but very passive.  My husband is also the sweetest man (next to Daddy) I have ever known but he is passive as well.  I worry she does not have my aggression, and I lament the fact that the word itself is considered to be negative.  Aggression to me is strength and assertiveness.  She is always kind and gentle and will never hit back.  I never hit anyone as a child either but my father made sure I stood up for myself.  Tonight she earned her sixth belt in karate and it is my hope she will be quick enough to avoid their aggression in the future.  If not, I hope she takes them down at the knees.

My mother was born on Good Friday and Easter was always her favorite time.  She studied piano for many years and often spoke of the lavish Easter egg hunts her teacher threw for her pupils.  In those days there were live chicks and bunnies given away (thank heaven society realizes that is wrong now, as people do not commit to the little animals for their lives and they wind up abandoned or worse).  I have always loved Easter more than Christmas.  And hunting for Easter eggs is the ONLY type of hunting I adore!  Well, that and scavenger hunts.  I grew up in an apartment and we really did not have anywhere to go so each year I would wake up and Mama had hidden eggs all over the living room.  As I got older it became more difficult to find them all.  She had a baby grand piano and I could always count on an egg placed carefully inside the wood before the strings.  I think it was the nicest thing she ever did for me and I looked forward to it more and more with each passing year.  Now they just dump eggs on the lawn and kids scramble for them; where is the fun in that?  I am thrilled that my little girl gets to go to an elegant country club where they have the Easter Bunny, a lovely buffet, face painting, baby animals to pet, a pony to ride, and a colorful train in addition to the egg collection.  But this is the year I am going to start my mother’s tradition of a real hunt inside our home.  It will require time, patience, and thought.  I have often wished my husband would do some type of treasure hunt for me.  But of course the greatest gift any of us could ever hope to receive has already been given:  through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ who gave His life so that we all might live.  The British Cardinal Basil Hume said:

“The great gift of Easter is hope – Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake.”

My little one will awaken tomorrow to an Easter basket full of goodies.  But it is my hope that she will discover the joy of eternal hope through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  His treasures abound; we have only to see them.

When I was a little girl, I insisted upon taking my beloved stuffed animals with me wherever we went.  I always started out carrying them proudly but eventually got tired of keeping up with them.  I still hold loving images in my mind’s eye of my big, strong daddy clutching an armful of stuffed animals in public without an ounce of shame.  As I got older I had to keep up with them myself or leave them at home.  Our little one is very good about remembering her things.  In this case she had her hands full carrying her new shoes and just couldn’t manage her dog, too.  Looking at my husband standing there holding my four year old’s purse took me back to cherished times and precious memories with my sweet Daddy.  I am so glad my girl will have the same experiences I had with a strong man who loves her and isn’t afraid to nuture that in whatever form it may take.  So last night her Daddy took Sparkles the husky to the car without a trace of embarrassment and my heart was full.  American author Kent Nerburn (writer of one of my favorite books, “Neither Wolf Nor Dog”) said, “It is much easier to become a father than to be one.”  God graciously allowed my husband and me to have a child together, and that child is making him into a better man.

I really don’t think it’s my age; I am just not a fan of taking pictures of myself.  I never have been.  Do I want to be in some pictures?  Certainly!  I mostly want to be in vacation photos or with my family.  But today I got the best pair of sunglasses I’ve ever bought in my life.  They fit perfect, the lenses are polarized, and you can still see my eyes through them.  I like that because I don’t like speaking with people when you cannot see their eyes.  Best of all they are my favorite colors — dark blue and silver!  I love that they’re mirrored and frankly I will not care when they are no longer trendy; I will still love them.  They do not slip, pinch, or sit whompy-jawed on my face.  They alter the color when I see out but not so as to be depressing by being too dark.  And they are titanium so they’re super light.  They don’t have a big hunk of weird plastic or huge “accents” on the side.  They’re just great sunglasses I wish I’d had for the vacation we just took on spring break.  But everything happens for a reason as well as in its own time and I am just thrilled I was able to get them.  So thrilled I snapped this selfie at a stop sign after I’d put them on.  I didn’t pose, wasn’t made up, or take 2,000 pics.  I just wanted to capture the moment and remember how incredibly happy a pair of sunglasses made me.  German-born writer Eckhart Tolle said, “The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.”  My new shades have me covered inside and out; pretty cool. 😎