Posts Tagged ‘Family’
Joy
Down in my heart… I’ve been thinking about writing about joy, but I have been avoiding it. At times I have trouble finding it. This Christmas season the words “Love, Peace and Joy” pop up in greeting cards and in stores, but they are hard to find in the news, in the day-to-day reality of war and injustice. The news is evidently not where I should look to find joy. Lately I have been noticing little ones who readily embrace joy. I love doing science experiments with my kindergarten students. They see the outcomes of our experiments with wonder…
Read MoreThe Diagnosis
By Sheena Koops It started with squirrels at the end of his bed, and sometimes he would make Mom get up and see what those tall people in the corner were doing. He saw horses in a field and riders wearing tall hats with stovepipe points; he saw all this through the walls of his own home and through the houses along the streets. Not long before he passed he said, “Why is the little girl crying?” referring to the empty chair at the round kitchen table of their new home in Fort Qu’Appelle. Dad had neuropathy, a…
Read MoreCourage
By Bonnie Baxter Courage I find courage inspirational, particularly when I see it in others. Sometimes it is found in the big things. We find it wrapped in grace as we fumble through. I think of times I’ve seen courage: my friends helping their young daughter through challenging years with cancer. my brother persevering through his heart transplant, and a family donating a heart to give him new life. three dear mamas all saying goodbye to newborn boys…and many others who have kept on living, really living, when a child they loved was gone. dearly loved older people walking forward…
Read MoreClimbing
By Katelyn Pippus When I was little, one of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon was playing on the sandstone rock formations outside of Roche Percee, Saskatchewan. The rocks had been weathered and worn over time presenting the perfect spot for a prairie girl to pretend she was a mountain climber. I remember the first time mom and dad took me to the rocks and I got to clamber through the caves. Climbing at the rocks became a fall tradition for my family. Every time we went climbing, dad would show off how he could climb and jump between the…
Read MoreMy Uncle’s Passing
By Sheena Koops I remember Christmas, must have been 1987. My Uncle Jelsing and Auntie Sheena, their three boys, and a tag-along-friend-of-the-family came to the farm for Christmas. The young man, like a brother to my cousins, was Michael Koops from Victoria, BC. This young guy, my cousin, and I walked over the prairie into the Souris Valley, sometimes knee deep in snow, pretending we were on a quest. We watched movies; we sang carols, we played games: my cousins and this tall, dark and handsome friend-of-the-family. In August of 1989, I married that guy. Three daughters later, my Uncle and Auntie consider our girls their granddaughters, because they…
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