My grandfather was essentially an orphan. His mother died when he was only days old and his father left him in the care of an elderly lady that he called “Grandma.” When he was thirteen his adoptive mother died and he became a ward of the court under the guardianship of an uncle. Somehow in spite of growing up in a most unusual situation he became a great man whose integrity and love were legendary. My father-in-law was raised by an uncle and then later by a group of unmarried aunts. He too is an incredible man who has never had any problems adjusting to life and forming healthy relationships with people. Then there are my brothers and I who grew up in a single parent home plagued by sporadic poverty and mental illness. Somehow we all turned out to be just fine, actually even better than fine. What was the key to all us navigating through life without major problems? I suspect that it was just plain and simple love.
We have a tendency in our society to create definitions of how things are supposed to be. We describe the ideal family as being a man and woman who are married and dedicated to one another. There is certainly nothing wrong with striving for such situations but the reality of life is that not only are there other feasible alternatives but also sometimes the so-called traditional ways of family dynamics are actually toxic. Life is far too complex to insist on easy and inflexible methods of doing things. Continue reading “Dancing Toward the Future”
The annual frenzy known as March Madness is now over and a new national championship team wears the crown. The tournament comes by its frenetic name quite naturally because year after year virtually anything might happen as one college battles another. Unlike football that has become somewhat predictable and mostly the domain of universities with large amounts of money to spend, basketball is a sport that is still open to even small somewhat unknown schools. Whether public or private, it doesn’t seem to matter because as the minutes on the clock tick down nothing about the ending is ever certain. More than one Cinderella team has scored a victory in the final seconds making the game
There was a time when I thoroughly enjoyed perusing the the newspaper each morning. I was originally a Houston Post fan and the daily delivery that outlined local, national, and international events was my eye on the world along with a subscription to Newsweek. Alas, The Houston Post eventually closed its doors so I switched to The Houston Chronicle but I was never as fond of the columnists and editorial writers of that paper. Eventually I grew weary of seeing so many grammatical, spelling, and typographical errors inside its pages and I let my subscription lapse. When I see copies of it on the news stand today I realize that it is a shell of its former self. I fear that it is slowly dying and that worries me. A city the size of Houston should have a vibrant local newspaper and it doesn’t. Over time Newsweek became so pathetic that it went out of business. The last few copies of that once robust magazine were thin and cheap looking and the articles all had a sameness about them. It seemed as though a single journalist had penned every story, all of which had a definite liberal political bent. 
All It Takes Is A Little Love 