Kith & Kin

  AI art by Copilot This is the end of the story. Mom and Dad came in the door, and Keith and I ran to Mom and hugged her. She was finally home from the hospital, where she’d been for a long time because there was something wrong with her heart. Suddenly we were all three crying—I’d never been so happy that I cried before. Keith and I pointed at each other and laughed and cried at the same time and hugged Mom for a long time. And this is the rest of the story. It was an afternoon in 1967. I was at my pastor’s house, and his wife, Mrs. Wilkin, was babysitting me. Every day for a few days—a week or more?—I was to walk up the village’s north hill to her house after morning kindergarten to stay with her . . .  because my mom was in the hospital. Mrs. Wilkin was a nice lady. I remember her as being tall (but all adults were tall), not heavy, and with dark hair. I remember learning to play pick-up sticks while I was with her, and I remember her giving me my first paying job....

It ’ s December 1, 2023, and my brother Eric reminded me this morning that Mom would have turned 86 today were she still with us. Home at lunch by myself, I looked at an old picture of her, taken before I was born. She is young and slim and attractive; she ’ s pinning on a corsage, and she looks very happy. I looked at the photo and thought about Mom long enough for a painful lump of ice to form in my throat, melt, and come out my eyes. She was an amazing person—one in a million isn’t enough; she was one in a billion. Here are a few scattered memories of her that flutter around in my head from time to time. Days of Joy Mom knew how to raise boys. She knew what boys were like and how to handle them. She must have come by this naturally, because she wasn’t raised with boys—only her older sister. Maybe it wasn’t that she was a natural at “raising boys”; maybe it was just that she wasn’t going to let anybody buffalo her, be it a screaming three-year-old or a disrespectful teen. B...

Photo of the actual Snake in the actual trash can moments before his untimely demise. A (mostly) nonfiction work written in script format by Steve Skaggs DISCLAIMER: This really happened, and, yes, we really did kill the snake. I know there was truly no reason to do so. We could have done something far more kind, such as releasing it into a nearby field or putting it into a neighbor’s mailbox. (Yes, “neighbor,” you know who you are!) But we were panicked. We were not thinking clearly. And, besides, if that snake didn’t want to end up dead, he should have stayed outside where he belonged! CAST (in order of appearance)      Cindy : The mother. She don’t do snakes.      Dad : Heroic leader of the family. Unflappable.      Jason : Sharp-eyed teenage son of Cindy and Dad. Laconic.      Black Snake : Out of his element and doomed from the start.      Caleb : Teenage son armed with shovel. Stoical. OPENING SCENE...

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 ...

I mentioned in an earlier post that, starting in childhood and continuing even today, I love juxtaposing the feeling of fascination with the feeling of horror. (“It’s so scary but I can’t look away and I’m getting such a rush from this!”) That’s why I’m a sucker for YouTube videos from sites such as Mr. Ballen and The Why Files with headlines such as “Who Are the Dark Watchers?” and “Ghosts of Flight 401.” Most of the time I watch these out of curiosity with a large dose of skepticism mixed in, but even when I don’t believe the stories, I’m like, “Well, thanks, you did a good job of combining fascination with horror!” But in spite of my lifelong fascination with creepiness, I’ve never experienced any sort of paranormal event myself. I’ve never spotted a cryptid looking at me through the backyard fence. I never walked by an abandoned house and saw a shadowy figure watching me from an upstairs room. I never heard a voice speaking when there was no one present. Shoot, I was rai...