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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

(No Title) (#682)

"It is a dangerous stretch of road," the Belfast Telegraph reports. And so it is. Our dear Sheryl died there, and her sister Tara with her. Jesus, shine Your light on the paths our hearts must travel. For this is a dangerous stretch of road, indeed.

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(No Title) (#683)

A year ago, my family's life was changed when we welcomed two girls from Northern Ireland into our home to live with us for six weeks' time. Last night, we learned that one of them, our little Sheryl, has changed our lives again. All we can bring ourselves to do is to pray that her death "will be swallowed up in victory," as the Scripture says. From the archives: E.R. and The West Wing are always promising that if I just watch tonight's episode, it will "change my life forever." So I watch, and I wait, and I watch some more. Nothing. Sure, I'm entertained, satisfied for an hour, and maybe my belief system is even bolstered by the scriptwriters' obvious ideologies. But changed forever? Hardly. The things that change your life forever, I'm finding out, almost always arrive quietly, unannounced, without fanfare. They seldom turn out to be what you first take them for, and always end up being more than you could have ever dreamed. Chloe and Sheryl will go back home to the towns of Fintona and Sixmilecross, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland in just three days time. We've been so wrapped up in their lives, and they in ours, for these past six weeks, that I haven't once had the time or notion to watch E.R. or The West Wing. And our lives have been changed forever. posted Monday, August 06, 2001

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(No Title) (#684)

My husband has purchased a luxury for me: the services of two women who come once every two weeks to clean my house. I promised him that during the hours when they are here, if at no other time, I would get some serious writing done. That is why he hired them: to free me from the housework and to give me more time and energy to write. They are here today, and I sit here with my hands poised over the keys, listening to the sounds of the work I've done my whole life, smelling the scents of my previous employment. The broom is making its way down the back hall as my fingers begin to move, and I think I may find a crack in a coffee cup when I check later--I recognized a familiar sound when it clinked against the faucet. So I write. Not my novel, or a poem, or a piece of inspiration or humor. Just another line or two about looking back, and then about looking forward. Soon, I won't hear the cleaning noises anymore. Soon, it will become second nature to think of someone else doing my work. Soon, the characters in my novel will be speaking so emphatically, they'll drown out the competition. But today, I'm stuck between a past I am comfortable with and a future I still don't quite recognize. Today, nothing mystifies me more than the present tense.

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(No Title) (#685)

The dream lasted only seconds and consisted of a single scene. A radiant bride, in a gown with a train ten feet long, appeared in the back of the cathedral for her long walk down the aisle. As she took her first steps, the hem of her train caught on fire. With each step, the fire grew, until it was gaining on the bride. Still, she kept moving forward. Every invited guest fled. Every attendant backed away toward the exits, solemn witnesses of an event they could not have imagined. But the bride would not be deterred. At the end of it all, she stood in front of the altar, her face still beaming, her dress in flames, and waited alone for her bridegroom.

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(No Title) (#686)

If you found the only copy of a hidden portion of your personal history, and it was written in pencil, what would you do? Would you turn the pages over and over, committing the story to memory, as the very letters smudge into meaninglessness with the handling? Would you write over the marks with your ballpoint pen until the words seem nothing but a trumped-up forgery? I dreamed last night of five sheets of age-softened paper, on which was written the story of my life. "It's better than I remember it," I thought, "and worse than I remember it, too." I dreamed of driving to the place where multiple copies of the story could be made, and of how I would distribute them indiscriminately to friends and family in the name of history. The pages fanned out in the passenger seat, and the sun shone through the window. Upon arrival, the pencilled words had all faded into nothingness, and no amount of adjusting the machine for brightness and intensity would bring them back.

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(No Title) (#687)

Sometimes I think of the young woman I was in 1977, the one whose eyes opened like slits as the effects of general anesthesia were just beginning to subside. The one who saw her mother standing there and announced, in her most dignified voice, "I have something of extreme relevance to share." Mother moved closer, gently stroked my face and asked, "Well, then, what is it?" She was answered with a sound snore. I think of the young woman, and wonder. Do I still speak what must be said? Do I still write what must be written? Do I still have something of "extreme relevance" to share? Or do I just jolt people awake with my snore?

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(No Title) (#688)

This morning, I watched a worship service happen before my eyes. "I want to see You..." The father removed the baby boy from his car seat with a carefulness, a reverence, a certain holiness. The infant looked up at him, trusting. "I want to hear Your voice..." The father held the child to his heart, and bent to whisper his love. "I want to know You more." The baby almost understood the father's love, and smiled. The father smiled back, praying his son would someday know the height and length and width and depth. "I want to touch You..." The boy fumbled to lay hold of his father's face, and latched onto his ear with his little fist, and pulled on it. The father kissed the top of the baby's head. "I want to see Your face..." The father turned to face the child head on, and their eyes locked. The child loosened his grip on the father's face as he fell into his gaze. "I want to know You more." This morning, I touched the heart of heaven, just two rows away. Lord, I want to know You more.

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(No Title) (#689)

I hesitate to tell my husband that he keeps closing the shower curtain in a way which is causing water to puddle on the bathroom floor. He'd try to do better, I know, and he wouldn't mind me mentioning it. It's just that I know him too well. If he focuses on the shower curtain, he'll space out something else and tonight, in the darkness, I'll fall bottom-first into the toilet. A woman learns to choose her complaints.

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(No Title) (#690)

Normally, I don't do fashion commentary, but I just can't help myself. The prosperous county in Kansas which adjoins my tax-disadvantaged county in Missouri sometimes attracts my business. We go to the movies over there, my favorite Walmart is there, and all the best garage sales are there. By best, I mean the hosts of the garage sales "change their colors" every six months. I am the happy beneficiary of newly upholstered couches and wing chairs, and rooms full of solid wood furniture purchased for a fraction of their value because they'd fallen from fashion grace. I haven't been privileged to visit the inside of more than a few of these homes, but many of the subdivisions restrict the colors of outside paint to white and three shades of beige. Shutters provide a little more excitement, all the way from sea-foam green to Williamsburg blue. Whoopee. I've always told myself these folks express their creativity in other ways, perhaps through their work, or through their dress. Until today, when I happened upon a women's clothing store called J. Jills. Doug and I stood mesmerized, window notshopping, and could see the entire store from our vantage point on the sidewalk of the upscale shopping center. Every item, from pants to skirts to tops to accessories, was one of three colors--white, pale aqua, and Johnson County beige. All I know is, if J. Jills'customers get in the mood to change their colors, they'll be out of luck.

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(No Title) (#691)

One thing about my mom: her mind--and especially her memory for details--is intact. An unfortunate series of medical mishaps over the past four months led my mother to decide to move into an assisted-living place this past weekend. If asked to list all the experiences that led to this decision, she could give you an accurate, minute-by-minute, chronologically ordered account of her travails. Since Saturday afternoon's move, she could tell you exactly what time her phone service got hooked up, when she first met Ginger, one of the head nurses, and that fellow-resident Jean has two sons, one of whom lives in Norway. No one knows why, not even Jean. Mom and I met a lovely woman, Bea, during Mom's first breakfast in the dining room. Mom learned Bea's whole life story over one meal. Later that afternoon, I dropped Mom at the main door while I went to park the car. "There's Bea up on the patio," she said, and she walked up to join her. By the time I got there, the two of them had chatted. "Bea doesn't remember me from this morning," Mom said, almost as if her feelings were hurt. "Well," I said, as philosophically as I could, "that WAS a long time ago." I looked down at my watch, and my mother looked at her own. "Oh, yes," Mom said, "it was a VERY long time ago." Bea smiled, clearly vindicated by our ability to tell time. So much--and yet so little--happens in the course of any given day. May my mom's given days be filled with the joy of remembering, and may Bea know the peace of those who forget.

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(No Title) (#692)

If you've seen Niagara Falls, you've really seen something. But for a wonderful town, travel another twenty minutes to Niagara-On-The-Lake. Doug and I enjoyed a leisurely couple of hours there on our family's vacation, and I thought I was in heaven. Picturesque Victorian homes and shops decorated with maple trees, lilac bushes and window boxes bursting with petunias. Orchards and vineyards and wine-tastings and antique stores. Not to mention Bed and Breakfast places. "It's too perfect," I said, on our way back to plain old Niagara Falls. "Mark my words, there's an ax murderer living in the shadows on one of these farms--there has to be." And then I saw the sign posted by the winding lane leading to the most beautiful farm of them all. "Cold Drinks, Maple Syrup, Pure Honey, Fudge." So that proves it, then, doesn't it? Niagara-On-The-Lake really is the most perfect place on earth.

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(No Title) (#693)

I saw the stringy-haired blonde asking a clerk a question in aisle four of Walgreen's. Thirty seconds later we met personally in aisle three, where I was looking at small appliances and she at a display of electrial power strips and extension cords. "Have you seen the glue?" she asked. I looked around. She was talking to me. "I don't think it would be here," I answered. Just then she reached up and grabbed two tubes of Super Glue. "Have you seen the fake fingernails?" she asked. I became frightened. Today, in the historic Waldo neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri, some poor woman has received her final manicure.

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(No Title) (#694)

Things I Wish I'd Said: Third or Possibly Fourth In a Series "I have found that the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it." Harry S Truman, from a television interview on May 27, 1955 Since I was only a baby when Mr. Truman made his comment, I can be excused for not coming up with it first. Still, with kids ages 23, 20 and 17, I sure wish I'd had a thought even reasonably close to it a little earlier.

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(No Title) (#695)

I've been spending a lot of time in waiting rooms lately. And as much as I agree with everybody who loves Raymond, I can only read the Ray Romano cover story on the Ladies' Home Journal so many times. So I've invested in a 1.9 pound keyboard that runs for 500 hours on 3 AA batteries. Whatever I write while I'm away from my desk is easily dumped onto my computer later. Who knows? If I can turn out some decent writing, maybe someday people will love seeing this Raymond's story in print, too. It's worth a shot.

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(No Title) (#696)

One minute your doc calls to say the MRI of your head is completely normal (in spite of the swollen optic nerve the opthamologist saw), the next minute you decide to go ahead with your planned trip to New York in spite of FBI warnings, and the next minute your whole family is packing bags and hi-tailing it to KCI. MRI, FBI, KCI. As Ricky Ricardo would say, "I, I, I, I, I..." Only with an accent.

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