Wise Words Archive

I just returned from a morning walk in the fog. While I hate driving in fog, walking in it is another experience.

The world takes on a soft haze, its edges rounded off and colors dimmed. Sidewalks get shorter. It’s like peering at life through a gauzy curtain.

When I was younger, I couldn’t believe that I would reach an age where I would be walking in my mom’s orthopedic shoes. I don’t mean literally.

I mean that you can’t understand being old(er) until you get there.

When I started covering Navarre in the summer of 2020, I spent a lot of time on Concerned Citizens of Navarre’s Facebook page.

You can learn a lot about a community from pages like this. They help reunite lost pets, share stories of small kindnesses, give much appreciated updates about what’s going on in the community, as reported by individuals living there.

I grew up with the sound of typing, as my mother sat in the kitchen writing letters to far away friends and family members. She had a Smith-Corona, inked by a ribbon that needed to be replaced regularly, and it was electric.

I’m not always the sharpest technological pencil in the pack, so it took me a while to catch on to the fact that the ads appearing on my Facebook newsfeed were not just randomly things I liked. Like a long while. Years, in fact.

I just thought of it as one of the little miracles of life that the ads that I saw were often for things I actually sought or had thought of buying.

For Christmas this year, I got some of the most wonderful gifts of all – feedback from readers that they love Navarre Press and appreciate our role in the community.

A few people went out of their way to send us this gift. Others mentioned it when they were making sure their subscriptions didn’t expire.

On Tuesday, the day this column was due, I erased everything I had written and started all over.

My original premise was to write about the homeless, since I always think of them when it’s hot or cold or a time of year when the rest of us are celebrating and they are trudging from campsite to campsite.

When I was a child, there was still such a thing as penny candy. It was taking its dying breaths, but it lived long enough for me to buy some.

People worry about inflation now, and rightfully so, but that transition into nickel candy was a painful economics lesson for a young child. Overnight, it seemed, a penny didn’t buy anything at all.

Anticipation is my drug of choice, and no time of year is more pleasing than the weeks leading up to Christmas.

I’m not much of a shopper anymore, having entered a phase of my life when getting rid of things feels even better than getting new possessions. But at Christmas, it’s still just as sweet.

It’s a privilege this year to write a column that may be read on Thanksgiving Day. For me, columns about being grateful are some of the easiest to write.

I’m very conscious of gratitude in my everyday life, since I have found it can push me above ground on days when I’m tempted to wallow in a hole. No matter how frustrating and painful life can be, it’s also such a gift. I know that sounds cringe-worthy.