Kith & Kin

Author’s Note: I wrote this story over twenty years ago. As I often do, I’ve taken an actual event and related it, I hope, with some humor. Is every fact strictly true? No, but at least 90% of it is. Or maybe 80%. Either way, I hope you enjoy it! So my brother Eric and his wife, Aimee, want us all to go to Acres of Fun to let the kids play and for a game of Laser Tag. I am almost forty years old; I do not want to play Laser Tag. It is stupid and pointless. It is beneath my dignity . . . way beneath it. But I do not tell anyone that I am feeling this way. I do not want to be petty. So we get to Acres of Fun. It takes about three hours for the guy at the desk to figure out how to charge us for six kids and four adults. You’d think they’d never had a group this big come in before. So then Eric gets us all paid for (he and Aimee are paying for this, which is another reason I have vowed not to grouse), and the kids go over to the “Soft Play” zone. You know, that’s like a McDonald’s Pl

Merry Christmas from my mom. . . . the nut. I haven’t been doing this blog very long, but I knew when I began it that the time would come when I needed to write memories about my mom, and I knew that could be emotionally draining for me. Nobody had a more profound effect on my life than Mom did, with her wonderful qualities and even her faults. I know God is in control of everything, but I can’t help feeling cheated that she went as suddenly as she did. On the other hand, Dad suffered for weeks and months before he passed, and I wouldn’t have wanted her to go through that either. On this date, Thursday, December 1, 2022, Mom would have been eighty-five years old , having been born in 1937. She was godly and wise. She was stubborn. She was a good listener. She had a temper. She was a faithful friend. She could be blunt. And she was unquestionably . . . a nut. She had a wonderful sense of humor, something any mother of four sons needs in abundant supply. So to avoid growing maudlin,