It was in the mid-1980s–30 years ago–but I still remember the astonishment I felt. I had driven 120 miles to attend a mental health communication seminar led by Dr. Carol Oukrop, a good friend and my former professor. As I remember the situation, there were 15 or 20 of us […]
Marie Snider – This Side of 60
Life is change and I don’t like change. I like to have things stay like they are—the same people, the same furniture, the same institutions, the same vacation spots, the same stores. As a girl, there was very little change in my young life. I lived in the same farmhouse […]
The gripping scene of Ben Hur as a galley slave is still vivid in my mind. After seeing that classic movie almost 50 years ago, the horrible inhumanity of man-to-man surfaced in both my nighttime dreams and daytime thinking. How could people do it? How could they make slaves of […]
In my lifetime, I have consumed more than my share of coffee. I come from a long line of coffee drinkers. My dad especially loved a good strong cup of brewed coffee. And my mother, in her later years, referred to weak coffee as “slop.” When I was an infant, […]
There have been many important churches in my life. There was the loving, caring, large “meeting place” of my childhood, attended by my aunts and uncles. And my great-aunts and uncles, my grandmother, my parents’ cousins, and our neighbours. Oh, how I remember the singing when the whole church came […]
It was about 25 years ago but I still remember exactly where we were driving when we had the conversation. We were passing St. Mary’s Catholic Church in my hometown. We were talking about aging and I recited my philosophy of aging. “Grow old along with me!/The best is yet […]
One of my long-time dreams has been to live in a log cabin–a rustic, old-fashioned log cabin, with modern conveniences, of course. I could picture it all in my mind’s eye–a loft for sleeping and possibly for writing, and a “great room” where all of our living would take place. […]
My son is a master potter. He begins with an ugly lump of clay, puts the lump on his wheel, and then spins the clay with deft hands. From there, he fashions a beautiful vase, an elegant teapot, or a Goliath-sized bottle—sometimes more than six feet tall. And it all […]
Ever since my 25th birthday, I have been fascinated with the process of aging and have tried to figure out what it takes to age well. As I have mentioned in this column before, turning from 24 to 25 was traumatic for me. All my life, I had been hampered […]
In 1966, almost 50 years ago, our family moved halfway across the continent for a job. My husband had just finished his Master’s degree at the University of Alberta and had been invited to teach at a small church college in the middle of the United States. The thought of […]
Some people feel old at 80, others at 40, and others at 50. There was only one time in my whole life when I felt “old.” That was on my 25th birthday. How did I ever go from being the youngest person in the class–too young to hear the other […]
The first time I saw the prairie, I was struck by the vastness. It went on and on and on. My husband-to-be had taken me to his home province of Saskatchewan to meet his parents. On the way, he stopped at some farmland he owned to check the crops. He […]
