Barb's Blessings . . . Counting them one by one.

Who More Than Self, His Country Loved My first experience with war, close up and personal, came during the Vietnam era. I grew up with David Tiffany as we were the same age, and his sister, Linda, who was a year older than us, was one of my very first friends when we moved to Wheeler St. in the Arlington area of Riverside when I was 5 years old. The Tiffanys lived two streets away and our mothers were best friends. Linda and I were like sisters and consequently my relationship with David was more like that of an irritating brother. He was a joker and a teaser like his father and Linda and I were often the recipients of his pranks. We could never get the best of him. He was too good at it. The Tiffanys were a military family so it came as no surprise when at the end of our high school years, David enlisted in the Army and volunteered for duty in Vietnam. David trained as a medic and was charged with the duty to save lives. I last saw him after he completed his medic training when he...

I read an article today by a lady who was trying to analyze why she was finding turning 60 so difficult. She decided to analyze it scientifically and one of the things she did was to review a popular news magazine to see how many people pictured in the magazine were over 60. There were a few world or business leaders of the male gender but there were no women over 60 pictured. None! The assumption in our society is that the health, vitality, sexual attractiveness, mental acuity, etc., of women over 60 is on the wane, if not missing completely. It’s not correct but at some level, it is what it is. Any way you spin it, 60 is the beginning of the end. Middle age is behind you and it’s a down hill slide. I told a few strangers yesterday that it was my birthday and when two of them asked me "which birthday?"I told them . . . "60." They both responded with “you don’t look sixty.” At first glance that is certainly nice to hear but if you think about i...

In front of a fountain at The Crossings in Corona. I have been refusing for days to have this birthday. There is just no joy in 60. It's not a portend of maturity like 40 or "I'm comfortable with my live" like 50. It's just old. No longer young, no longer middle aged. Just old. The last thing I wanted today was to have to smile while the good people I work for and with offered a celebration of this milestone. It's a stone I'd rather just skip over. So I took the day off. A few months ago our niece, Lindsey Schaack, came to visit with 4 of her friends and as a thank you gift they gave us a gift card to one of our favorite restaurants, BJs. We love to go to Laguna and have pizza at the BJs across from main beach. We left about 11:00 to do lunch at the beach and got almost to the I-15 interchange on the 91 at which point there was a sign stating that the 91 freeway was closed at Lincoln because of a major accident. So I made my way out of the carpool lane and...

A nother Mother's Day. It stuns me how mixed and close to the surface my emotions still are each Mother's day. If you are reading this you probably know that my first 10 Mother's Days as a married woman were spent childless. The first 5 weren't great but they were tolerable. The next five were spent at home or hiding in the bathroom at church. And then, overnight, we were parents . . . I was a mother. The joy we felt at our good fortune was almost enough to make me forget about the painful Mother's Days of the past . . . almost but not quite. I don't dwell on it but the pain is never far from the surface. Every Mother's Day I look around me to see who is hurting, who is childless, alone, feeling the loss of a child or their mother. I try not to take the talks in church too seriously. I know they mean well. Last year our wise and compassionate Bishop gave the speakers topics unrelated to motherhood. I never enjoyed a Mother's Day more. I went to a wonderf...