Category comfort

FMM 1 20 2023 Words for Life

“Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.” ~ Buddha. Last month I participated in a daily challenge.  The challenge was daily, my participation was more sporadic.  We were given a prompt to write a poem.  One day the prompt […]

FMM 12 9 2022 The Prism of Poetry

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” ~ Khalil Gibran. I remember writing stories as a child, whether it was school assigned or spontaneous I don’t recall.  It was not until I was in my thirties that I decided I wanted to write, and went out […]

FMM 8 13 2021 Our patchwork life

“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.” ~ Stephen Sondheim. My grandfather (whom I never met since he died some years before I was born) was a truck driver.  He left school at the age of twelve, and his first job was to stand outside a grocery store (where there […]

FMM 5 21 2021 Comfort over Fashion

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” ~ Aristotle. I don’t remember being very fussy about clothes as a child.  As the youngest I inherited most of my ‘gently worn’ outfits. I remember one dress in particular. It had not been handed down from my […]

FMM 3 5 2021 Threats and Opportunities

“An awareness of one’s mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.” ~ Bernie Siegel. I can’t say that I loved Physics when I was in high school.  I was amused by one of our teachers who demonstrated the movement of molecules and how it changed as they got heated […]

FMM 3 13 20 Virus Ignoramus

“Vows made in storms are forgotten in calm.” ~ Thomas Fuller.  I have one very clear memory of nursing during the early days of the AIDS epidemic.  A young man had developed a collapsed lung, which required the insertion of a tube into his chest wall to suck the air out of the pleural space […]

FMM 12 27 19 Home Stretch

“You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.” ~ Ram Dass. There was a time when I would unwind after a hectic night shift by sitting at my dining table reading the Miami Herald, cup of coffee at my side, kids on or off my lap.  Sundays were particularly special – […]

FMM 7 19 19 Mythomania

“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.” ~ Carl Jung. My first introduction to the panoply of Greek gods and goddesses was in first form (sixth grade) in my Jamaican high school.  We were decked out in our shiny new uniforms, proud of […]

FMM 6 14 19 Sing out Loud!

“As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.” ~ Nelson Mandela. There is nothing like waking up before dawn in the cool hills of Jamaica; there is peace and quiet before the roosters start to crow, and the dogs start their chorus.  Once the daylight […]

FMM 5 24 19 Brass Bands and Parenting

O Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, And feel the promise is not vain, That morn shall tearless be. ~George Matheson. I am not sure why I love the sound of a good brass band.  They are a particularly English phenomenon, […]