Easter and the Easter Egg Tree

Easter and the Easter Egg Tree

  The following story is an excerpt from The Heritage of Etta Bend, a story my mother told me about her childhood in northeast Oklahoma. The “I” is my mother, Susie Latty Day. Mom told me this story and I wrote it to be included in The Heritage of Etta Bend in 1989. It was […]

Mom

Mom

      Today would have been my mother, Susie Latty Day’s, birthday and if she were here, I’d bake her favorite dessert–lemon pie. The lilac bush at her house in Tahlequah is blooming now and that’s fitting because she loved lilacs. In fact, when she was sixteen, her dear Aunt Ettie, Tettle, she called […]

An Historic Day at a Farmhouse in Virginia

An Historic Day at a Farmhouse in Virginia

  Dignity in defeat and graciousness in victory. I’ve often wished, if I could go back in time, that I might have been present that day, April 9, 1865, in the parlor of Wilmer McLean of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. I would like to have seen General Robert E. Lee, tall and erect, dressed in […]

When Grandma Bohannon Came to Etta Bend

When Grandma Bohannon Came to Etta Bend

The Heritage of Etta Bend and Remembering Etta Bend are books of the stories of my mother’s childhood on a thriving Oklahoma farm in the last century. My cousin Carolyn Cochran Karinen drew the cover pictures for both books. Then, as now, everyone was glad to see signs of spring and know that the long […]

A Swirling Mist of Irish Green

A Swirling Mist of Irish Green

    A visitor to Ireland returns home surrounded by a mist of Irish green from Ireland, that mystical island across the Atlantic forever within her heart–a fabled land where ancient towers still keep watch on the countryside. I close my eyes and see swans floating on the River Shannon surrounding King John’s Castle. Swans […]

Frosty Roofs, Warm Hearths

Frosty Roofs, Warm Hearths

  The sun shines on white, frosty roofs this morning. No matter the color of the shingles, they all look the same–cold! But, under the frigid rooftops, inside the house, I hope there is warmth and love and comfort. Just in case we have forgotten, this is Presidents’ Day, but it isn’t the birthday of […]