“We Didn’t Wait”
My adopted children have taught me things about the world and myself that my biological children never could have.
“Faith”
I know without a shadow of a doubt. The certainty – an unassailable wall for my fifteen-year-old mind. The cold stone barring the warmth of — Belonging. Doubts swoop at my head, yellow talons extended, slash at my unprotected heels. Hope might be chink-hold for my tennis-shoed foot but even a crack would have shadows. I beat my fists against the wall with no toe holds.Lorraine Jeffery is a retired public library manager living in Utah while traveling and writing. (Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash)
“Truth”
I was bored. My crinoline underskirt prickled my legs, but I pushed it down and arranged my hands in my lap, thinking about the weekend trip to the Oregon coast tide pools with my family. It was 1958, and in my Mutual class I was listening to the umpteenth lesson on the importance of chastity before marriage. I wasn’t bored because I thought that it didn’t apply to me or that I thought chastity was unimportant—I had just heard what I considered the same lesson taught again and again with the same wording in the same way. My fifteen-year-old brain […]
