What Really Matters, According to Me

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was born in a dungeon to a fairy princess who was kept by an evil sorcerer. The princess didn’t know who she was. Hence, the little girl didn’t know who she was either. In truth, the sorcerer thought he was an average man, and he had no idea that he walked around casting evil spells on the whole house with a simple word. It came to pass, one day, that the princess realized she must find some way to escape from the sorcerer and get away from the dungeon in which she lived. She knew there was a place where the sun shines and rain falls. She had a faint remembrance of it, though it had been many years since she saw the sunlight or tasted the rain...and she was under a deep and dark enchantment. She seemed almost lost and drowning, all at once, as she began to dig a tunnel beneath the outer wall with a rusty spoon. She spent days or months or years, tunneling. While she did thus, the little girl grew. She grew into a beautiful maiden. Growing ...

I’ve had a handful of peculiar dreams. I’ve shared them with my children, my husband and a few close friends over the years. It has occurred to me that I may want to share them with my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so I’ll chronicle them here. I invite the reader to assign meaning to the dream(s)…or not. As you wish. I dreamed I was standing on the bank of a shallow river with my children. We desperately needed to cross the river and get to the other side, and even though the water was ankle deep when we set out, it was quickly rising past my knees and to my waist. I was terrified my children would soon drown in what was becoming rising flood waters of the river, and I began to search the area for possible solutions. I found two large flat stones on the floor of the river and held them up, one in each hand. Just as the water was rising over my head, I told my son, Philip, to get his brothers and sisters across the river using the upheld steppingstones to cross. I took one la...

On the way home from work and school the other day, my most excellent teenage daughter asked (pointing to a new double-wide mobile home that recently appeared on the property down the lane from us), “Why can’t we get something like that?” You see, we live in a 100+ year-old cabin on 100 acres of hill country land that has been in my good husband’s family for five generations. The cabin has an old single-wide mobile home pulled up against it, and though some may not consider it to be beautiful to look at from the outside, it’s homey inside and being here (we have all agreed), fills each of us with a feeling of safety and peace. There are enough bedrooms to accommodate us and we share the single bathroom well enough. I replied to my daughter, “Y’all are going to grow up and leave home in less than ten years. We don’t have a mortgage on the farm, and Wilson and I don’t want to be stuck paying for a big place like that for the next 30 years when y’all won’t even be here with us anymore. B...