I sat in the haymow and watched the sky gather black clouds until the rain came, and then I climbed down the ladder and ran barefoot through the fields of my father. The grass clung to my feet as I ran through buttercups and purple clover. I ran faster and…
Soft summer breezes dance through green trees. Leaves dip and bow. There’s no hurry now. In their movements time rents a generous space, fills it with your face. I loved you that summer of cloudless skies, unending wind, early morning mists melting time present into time past. I loved you…
The 9:02 a.m. ride to the 25th floor of the Penobscot Building in downtown Detroit goes slowly. I glance around and realize I’ve been spotted. The office bookkeeper nods a curt greeting while mentally noting my tardiness. Third time this week I’ve been late. I know she’ll make a note…
Rex fell in love with me the summer I was ten. His attention made Mum awful mad. Every evening after the milking was done and the cows put out to pasture Rex rode his bike down the road to our place. He’d take the front steps two at a time,…
A rusty old nail sticks out of a post Sticking out of the ground in Dad’s field. Its work is done, the cows are gone Yet it refuses to yield. Does it recall its younger days When it was tall and strong? And kept the cows from wondering Where they…
When I was sixteen, Mr. Buckley, my tenth grade English teacher—a portly, middle-aged bachelor who wore thick, black-rimmed glasses over his dark eyes, shabby shirts and jeans, and a black tam over his balding head—brought a grocery bag full of paperback books into our classroom and dumped them on his…
I close my eyes and see my future. Like a rubber band, miles of years stretch before me. I see horses hitched to plows turning over the rich earth. I see full seeders making the length of the fields and waves of ripe grain awaiting harvest. I see winter’s gentle…
The 1970s did me in. All my troubles began with the seventies and their strobe lights and burned draft cards and 99 cents a gallon gasoline and the relentless Viet Cong who didn’t know they were defeated but just kept coming and coming, garbed in twigs and mud, too stupid…
Hot August sun burns into my pores. I’m in the sandbox with my twin dolls, Molly and Polly. I finally got them to sleep. It wasn’t easy, what with little black ants crawling over them. I swished them away without hurting them. Except the leader. I always kill the leader….
Farm Life A kid on the farm with only her imagination as playmate gets up early on summer mornings, pokes her head out bedroom windows, checks to see if she’s beaten the cows. Nope! Silver’s leading the pack, clang, clang goes her bell. Daisy lost her bell last week so…
By Sharon M. Kennedy For many years Mom’s brother, who lived in Dafter with his wife and children, stopped by our place every Sunday afternoon. Steven was one year younger than my sister. Jerry was a year older than I was. Those visits weren’t particularly memorable with the exception of…
by Sharon M. Kennedy Dad and our neighbor, Bill Sarley, are stripping the bark from logs that will be turned into slabs and buzzed up for our woodstove. In the 1950s, Dad didn’t own a chainsaw so he rigged up the buzzsaw to his tractor and somehow ran the logs…
By Sharon M. Kennedy For a gal who was raised on a farm, there’s nothing quite as silent and nostalgic as an empty barnyard. The barn in these pictures, once so full of life, no longer exists. When I took these photos in the 1970s, the milk cows had been…
by Sharon M. Kennedy Dad with grandkids Alan and Emily On this day (September 12) in 1983, Dad didn’t know he had one week left to live. He wouldn’t get a chance to give my daughter rides on his tractor as he had my brother’s children. He wouldn’t even be…
by Sharon M. Kennedy Every year after Labor Day Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 comes to mind because it signals the end of summer. Even the swings at Brimley State Park are silent as children return to their classrooms. Some are pleased to be back among friends. Others wish summer would never…
by Sharon M. Kennedy I was eight years old in 1955. I don’t remember much about the parade and festivities associated with the centennial celebration of the Soo Locks. What I do remember is men were encouraged to grow beards, something Dad would never do. Women got out their sewing…
By Sharon M. Kennedy Every summer my aunts and uncles from downstate packed their cars and drove to the sideroad. Mom’s sister, Marie, pictured to the far left in the photo, always spent two weeks at the old homestead, the house across the road from where I live. Her brother,…
by Sharon M. Kennedy This Sunday, July 23, would have been my niece’s 56th birthday. There won’t be a celebration because Carol died twenty-one years ago when she didn’t see the point in going on. Like many other young people who have suffered a loss they cannot accept or who…
by Sharon M. Kennedy These hands have served me well all the long years of my life. I think of the work they have done, the loved ones they have held, and the stories they have written. I think of the times when I wanted to quit but my hands…
By Sharon M. Kennedy Jude and Sharon When summer finally arrived in the Eastern Upper Peninsula, my sister and I looked forward to spending hours in the sunshine. We donned summer clothing that looked much the same as our winter wardrobe except our blouses had short sleeves and our overalls…
by Sharon M. Kennedy In the 1970s, I lived in the Detroit area. When I came home for a visit, I always brought presents for my parents. Often they were silly ones such as a three-foot-long box of Sander’s candy. Mom had a ball with that box. As it emptied,…
by Sharon M. Kennedy In 1892, Francis Bellamy wrote the “Pledge of Allegiance.” It wasn’t long thereafter that Daniel Ford, owner of a children’s magazine called The Youth’s Companion, asked an editor to create a physical movement to accompany the pledge. I’ll skip all the ins-and-outs and simply say the…
by Sharon M. Kennedy In the late 1920s, Mom’s sister, Kate, married a tall gentleman from Illinois. I was never told how they met. I don’t think Vernor Larson was in the military, but I’ll never know for sure. As a kid, it didn’t occur to me to ask about…
By Sharon M. Kennedy Uncle Steve standing outside the Wildcat Lair A few days ago I bought some plastic flowers and went to the cemeteries where my loved ones were laid to rest. I also took a supply of Kleenex with me. I knew I couldn’t blink back the tears…
By Sharon M. Kennedy It’s that time again here in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Time to think about tilling up the vegetable garden plot. Now that the danger of frost is almost over, it’s almost time to plant. I say “almost” because everyone living in the Eastern U.P. knows we’ll get…
