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Post-Valentine’s
At our age, my wife and I almost don’t notice Valentine’s Day. The only exception in our entire marriage when February 14th was a significant day was nine or ten years ago when my wife surprised me with an elegant dinner at a swanky little restaurant and then walked me across the street to a tiny venue where we enjoyed a wonderful concert with less than 50 other couples. The star of the show was one of my favorite singers, Mandy Barnett, and it was an evening I’ll never forget. But my strongest memory of Valentine’s Day stretches back to when I was seven years old. In Miss Stewart’s…
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Ninety And Nine
My mother used to sing a hymn when she did housework. This was when I was a small boy; when I was older, she never sang, though I don’t know why. The hymn I remember her singing often was “There Were Ninety and Nine,” and I can’t recall the last time I heard anyone sing or play this old chestnut. It’s a strange sort of dovetailing, me thinking of this hymn this morning, because today would have been my mother’s 99th birthday, and in the dark silence of the predawn, I heard a neighbor’s sheep baaing down in the holler. In the ancient world, such things would likely have been…