Trish Hermanson's Blog: Croutons - Seasoned Bits of Life, page 2

Searching for Normal

     When I tossed in laundry recently I remembered humorist Erma Bombeck saying that the only place you find “normal” is a setting on the dryer. That’s surely been true for us the past few years. A daughter miscarried. A granddaughter died after a seizure. I fractured a bone in my foot. A daughter and I stared cancer in the face. Three other members in my extended family fought cancer. Then recently, Duane’s sister and mother died from a violent car crash.
     Grief upon grief.
     Bombe...

Finding Light in a Dark Forest of Grief

     Duane’s mother and sister died recently from a violent collision. I know they are renewed in heaven now, but I’m as stripped as barren trees in a forest of grief. I couldn’t even turn to God. So I mumbled phrases from an old prayer, and this is what happened:
     “Our Father,” I whispered, and realized how amazing that God meets me intimately as my PAPA.
     “Who art in heaven.” My heart calmed with the PERSPECTIVE that even though I’m discombobulated, God’s still seated on heaven’s ...

The Question that Hit Like a Cold Rain

     The question hit others like a cold rain, while it washed over me like a warm shower.
     We were sitting at a table talking about what true Christianity is when our facilitator asked, “How might your life be different if you believed that you have God’s full and undivided attention?” Two people said it rattled them to realize that God knew their every move. Not me. I felt warm all over because I recalled a particular day walking to school with my daddy when I was in kindergarten.  ...

My Lieutenant Moment

     I had my Lieutenant Dan moment recently.
     Remember Lieutenant Dan, Forrest Gump’s friend who felt hopeless after he lost his legs in the Vietnam War? When he and Forrest Gump started a shrimp fishing business, a hurricane threatened to sink their boat and drown them. In response, Lieutenant Dan railed against God from the boat’s crow’s nest. The storm died down, the two survived, and Lieutenant Dan was a new man. He still didn’t have his legs, but he was at peace. Something about ...

Garbanzos and Other Gifts

     How my tastes have changed.
     I was a college student the first time I tried garbanzos. Yuck! A stranger named Marge, who was the age of my mother, served them on a salad to a group of us students she had invited to her home. Didn’t she realize we’d prefer pizza?
     Another person I didn’t appreciate during my college days was Olive, a woman the age of my grandmother. She lived in my home town and wrote notes to those of us studying away from home. Sweet, but I wasn’t interested i...

One Problem with Believing the Earth is Flat

     The problem with believing the Earth is flat is that you can’t in good conscience enjoy a snow globe, as my granddaughter Eve and I do. Why? Because the globe is round.
     I met a Flat Earther who seemed normal otherwise, but could I reason with him? Or for that matter, could I reason with someone who says that coronavirus is a hoax? Or that climate change doesn’t exist? Or who insists all vaccines are bad?
     “Of course, it is next to impossible to get someone to change their beli...

Where in the World is Orientar?

      Early morning, I’m in my jammies with Oak, my grandson, and we’re discussing where in the world is Orientar, the country the wise men came from to visit Jesus. He didn’t know, just as I didn’t when I was a child. Only when I could read did I understand the song said, “We three kings from Orient are bearing gifts….”
     Christmas songs can be confusing as a child. I wondered whether round young virgin meant she was fat. No, it’s “round yon virgin” - around the virgin over there. The ...

How Simple Words Changed a Life

     I recognized the stooped old man shuffling toward the building entry as someone whose words once impacted the world when he documented our times as a reporter for a prestigious international publication. Years earlier I’d heard Paul enthrall a crowd with tales of interviews with personalities like the shah, the pre-revolutionary political leader of Iran, when no other westerner had access. He knew how to open doors back then.
     Now no longer a player on life’s stage, Paul was faced...

Whatever Happened to the Age of Aquarius?

     A half century ago the age of Aquarius promised me personal perfection with bliss as sublime as a stroll along a beach. But since then, I’ve aged fifty years with wrinkles to prove it. So here’s my updating of the anthem “Aquarius”:

When my decades increase
And my back’s not feeling fine,
Orthotics guide each step,
Everything’s out of line.
This is the dawning of the age of A-A-R-P,
Age of Medicare Part B.
Seniority. Seniority.

Vegetables and lots of fiber,
Surgeons and prescribers.
No...

We Got Trapped in the Covid Maze

     Question: how many of Snow White’s seven dwarfs visited Duane and me these past two weeks when we were trapped in the Covid maze?
     Answer: All seven. Between us, we received visits from Sleepy, Dopey, Sneezy, and Grumpy (sorry, honey). We were in touch with a Doc, and we had to be Bashful - required to quarantine at home. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention the seventh dwarf, Happy. He visited when friends and family texted, called, and left food at the door - wonderful!
     It could have b...