April 2010

Teachers play a role in building Hildemara’s faith in Her Mother’s Hope.

Last week, while in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I had the good fortune to reconnect with a friend I met through email.  Sharon, now retired, taught Latin in a public high school. She had been using the Mark of the Lion trilogy to encourage students’ interest in Roman history, and invited me to visit.  Sharon is one of those teachers who inspire students to love learning.  Over the years, she and her husband, Dennis, have taken classes of students to Italy.  Oh, would I have loved to have been one of Sharon’s students.

Thankfully, I’ve been blessed to have a number of teachers who share Sharon’s traits: passion for teaching, dedication to students, high ideals and expectations, a talent in lighting the fire in others.   Here are a few of my favorites:

Miss Taylor, my fourth grade teacher, turned a bunch of rowdy boys into a winning baseball team, and taught a class of...

The drive for Education

In the beginning of Her Mother’s Hope, Marta’s father tells her education is wasted on girls.  This came from my grandmother’s story.  She was taken out of school before high school and put to work.  What she made was used to pay tuition for her brother.  She wrote “I wanted to go desperately…”  and “I never saw any money for my work, but almost every night I’d bring home a basket of vegetables and fruit which saved my parents some money as we had no garden…” 

Grandma’s father was a tailor and her mother a dressmaker.  Like Marta, my grandmother learned to sew, knit, crochet and embroider at an early age.  I never remember a time when she wasn’t knitting or crocheting something.  Before she passed away, she had made knitted slippers for everyone in the family and tucked them in a box under her bed. 

Like Marta, my grandmother was sent to a housekeeping school in Berne....

We had to put our German Shepherd down yesterday.  Shabah (“ghost” in Arabic) had lost 16 pound over the last few months and had displasia.  He could hardly hold himself up.  He was walking on the tops of his back feet and often crossed his legs and couldn’t untangle them.  Some evenings, I would follow him up the stairs and lift his hips with each step. Yesterday afternoon, while in the kitchen with Rick, he fell and couldn’t get up. 

Shabah had a good last day with our young grandson, Logan.  Our good old dog managed to get in a few face licks.  Logan cuddled up next to him and petted him.  Shabah adored children, and all our children and grandchildren have had a soft spot for him as well.  When Katie, our daughter-in-law, came by to pick up Logan, Shabah didn’t hear the bell.  Nor could he see clearly with cataracts on both eyes. 

With trepidation, we took Shabah to the vet for his check-up.  Rick had...

Rick and I just returned from a wonderful week in Washington, D.C. and Virginia with our daughter, Shannon, and our two eldest grandchildren.  Both are studying American history, and this seemed the perfect time to make the trip east.  We visited Memorials and Monuments.  We honored those who died for our freedom in World War II. We read the stirring words of Lincoln and Jefferson, found friends whose names are engraved on the Vietnam Wall.  We stood before the Star Spangled Banner on display in the American History Museum, and walked through displays of honor and bravery in the World War I and II galleries. 

George Washington’s precious Mount Vernon has been restored and refilled with family artifacts.  Where would our nation be today if Washington hadn’t declared eight years is enough for any president to hold office?  A world watched as power passed from one president to a second president. The Republic “of the people, by the people and...