Mexico on my Mind

Mexico on my Mind

My parents lived in Presidio, Texas when I was born.  The then tiny town and its Mexican sister, Ojinaga, sit across the international border from each other on the Rio Grande—known as the Rio Bravo del Norte in Mexico. My parents were mostly bilingual and traveled easily “across the river” to shop or eat dinner. You paid the bridge owner small change and over you went. Driving on the rickety wooden bridge was more worrisome than any Border Patrol presence. Presidio and Ojinaga were two sides of the same coin, but because Ojinaga was in another country, it felt romantic…

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Weddings

June weddings? Not in my family. But in January, our youngest son married in a splendid church wedding. His beautiful bride’s generous family included us every step of the way, and we are delightfully family-ized around the happy couple.  (Adjectives on steroids just go with a wedding. Have you ever seen Katharine Hepburn gush at the end of The Philadelphia Story?) Question: What makes a wedding perfect? Answer: A few decades. My parents, Clarence and Dalma Morrow had a midnight wedding, May 19, 1940 with just two attendants, and the preacher and pianist.  All this happened by candlelight at the…

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Thanks for Thanksgiving

Thanks for Thanksgiving

A line from the movie Bull Durham reminds me of Thanksgiving. Remember when the character Annie paraphrases the poet’s opinion of baseball: “Walt Whitman said, ‘I see great things in baseball. It’s our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us.’” Just as Whitman, or the screenwriter quoting him, singled out baseball,  Thanksgiving’s theme singles it from all other Days Off. It’s not directly associated with a battle or birthday. You can look it up. When you spend a day being thankful, that’s a day you haven’t spent wanting, needing, and feeling bad…

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