Earth's Crammed With Heaven

Today is my sister, Nurse Cori's, birthday. I call her Nurse Cori because as of July 30, 2012, she is, in fact, a nurse. But in my mind she has been a nurse for many birthdays before this one. It all began with Templeton, our pet rat. One very unfortunate day, Tempeton's cage got left on our front porch through the hours of gentle shade and morning light, perfect for letting rodents air, and into the baking afternoon sun.When Nurse Cori found him, he was panting out his last breaths. While I went into hysterics of grief at seeing our poor pet in pain, she took action. She bathed him in cool water and laid him gently onto our cold concrete floor in an effort to bring his body temperature back down. Although it was too late for dear Templeton, it was the beginning of Nurse Cori figuring out her calling. I have been proud to watch her pursue it through accelerated nursing school, and into a position at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. Nurse Cori has also been taking her skills over la

And so I begin the blogging. It's like starting a trip with Tom Bowyer, my beloved. He takes off full speed ahead before he does anything else. No effortful, intentional planning needed, no calculation of cost, no anticipation of possible problems, he just goes. You'll see this trait in action if you hang around on this blog long enough. It defines our story together. Makes it glorious, actually. He has told me many times to start blogging. "You're a writer," he says, "so write and let people read it." And I think it through and excuse myself under pretenses of not knowing what to write. "Write a journal," he says. "You do it all the time." And I have little to say against that. Then, it comes to me, "But what if no one else wants to read what I write?" The conversation usually ends here. Until today, when a friend of mine, Mrs. Katherine Suzanne Ramsay Rhodes, brilliantly undermined all my efforts to keep from keeping a b