I took a break from posting these past two weekends as I was finishing up my job at Park View Mennonite Church. I decided to make the transition from having a day job to concentrating on getting my book published. I will be publishing If You Promise You Won’t Tell myself, so wish me luck. As I am taking this …
Chapter 5: Smiling into My Future, continued I entered second grade with more than a little trepidation. I’d heard about the second-grade teacher, Mrs. Tackacs. There were all kinds of rumors about her. I was told she was really mean. Someone claimed she had stepped on a boy’s leg on purpose because he had it out in the aisle. Had …
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Chapter 5: Smiling into My Future, continued The summer after my first grade, Datt was looking for a paying job. I don’t know whether he had the motivation himself to go and look for work, or if Mem or his mother talked him into it. He had been forlorn for so long it seemed no one could have gotten him …
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Chapter 5: Smiling into My Future, continued I was still in first grade when my youngest sister Katherine was born. For reasons I don’t understand, I have no memories of the circumstances surrounding her birth. In my mind, she was not there one day, but then suddenly she was. I was a month away from turning seven, and it felt …
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Chapter 5. Smiling into My Future Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe When I entered first grade, I was still the only Amish child in my class. There were times when I had to stay on the sidelines. During exercises in the gym there were certain things …
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Chapter 4. Do-Bees and Don’t-Bees [T]oxic parents compare one sibling unfavorably with another to make the target child feel that he’s not doing enough to gain parental affection.[…]This divide-and-conquer technique is often unleashed against children who become a little too independent… — Susan Forward Mem carried the responsibilities of two parents, and consequently she relied on us children to help …
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