We were sitting around the couch the other evening and Liz, all 12 years of her, like she was pulling it out the empty space around her, said the sort of thing that can linger in a room a lifetime. “You know,” she said. “World War II was just awful.” I suspect she meant that […]
The boy in the striped pajamas, and a 12-year-old girl Read More »
It was a view from a porch or two but there was a third porch I sat on right around the same time, this front porch at home where I grew up, an old manor in Niagara that dates back to the 1870s, where Opa Froese, that is my father, still lives. It was my
Yesterday’s stories. Grandparents. Beauty deep inside. Read More »
We’re on the 6.46 am train from Salzburg to Munich, somewhere near the German-Austrian border, with Bavarian countryside and snowy Alps and children curled up and asleep, The Children’s Mother nodding off too, a couple of days to go in this family holiday, this, what has turned into an annual European respite while returning to Canada from Africa.
Planes, trains, and not peeing our pants Read More »
“Daddy, it’s The Giver!” Liz said when we found the DVD for a thousand shillings, about 40 Canadian cents, at a hole-in-the-wall movie stand across the road from the edge of the university. At home, we saw it even worked, never a guarantee with these sorts of Ugandan movie outlets. For those not familiar with
“If you can’t feel, what’s the point?” Read More »
It was at the dinner table, Sunday evening, and the kids and Mom were telling me about the morning service where some brave Ugandan kid got up in front of hundreds of university students and adults too and boldly rhymed off a poem expressing his sincere wish that Ugandan parents would just listen to their
Sometimes children should be seen and not heard Read More »
She’s hardly a perfect girl, but there is one thing about our adopted daughter, Hannah, she can say things from time to time that show just how profoundly thankful she is to be in our family. Even at her young age — she’s just 8 — she knows enough about her own story. On the
On adoption, giving thanks and growing young Read More »
I had given my large German flag to my father some time ago, a gift for him to, with a Canadian flag, run up the flagpole that for many years stood by a tree I would climb as a boy at our home in Niagara. But it never made from Dad’s home-office to that pole, and,
Germany wins World Cup on remarkable Froese Family anniversary Read More »
It was the Ungame and this time the question was for Jon: “Describe your father in three words.” “Big nose,” he started out. The other two words, I somehow blocked out. Then I had to answer the same question about my own father. “Old. Tough. German.” Which is what Jon will be facing, someday. So, careful son.
Germany wins! But my face is still so (im)perfect Read More »
