Nancy Range Anderson – Author

 Today my father would have been 108 years old. He’s been gone almost 33 years, and I still miss him terribly. Lately, as I’ve been recovering from my knee replacement, I’ve been thinking a lot about him and his courage, both as a WWII pilot and later when he was so sick with cancer. On the harder days, I can almost hear his voice telling me to keep going and to be strong. This morning, while I was walking Augie, a man stopped, looked at him, and said, “Go get ’em, Tiger.” Those are the exact words my father used to say to my sister and me whenever we were facing something hard. I actually stopped for a second. In that moment, it didn’t feel like a coincidence. It felt like him. Like his way of saying hello on his birthday. If I think about his “Special Job,” the way I describe it in Caitlin’s Star , I can picture it so clearly. He’d be leading a group of children in a march, singing I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts , with all of them following along right behind him....

  Today, during my at-home physical therapy exercises, I cried. I am seven weeks post knee replacement surgery, and while I’ve made a lot of progress, moments like today remind me that healing isn’t always linear. For over seven years, yoga has been part of my life. It’s been my place of strength, calm, and connection. I look forward to my practices, especially the open and welcoming people, and the grounding that comes with it. This morning, I was doing heel pulls, (slipping my foot into a yoga strap and pulling my leg toward me). With a good knee, it’s easy and something I never gave a second thought to before. With a recovering knee, it’s everyone’s least favorite exercise. As I pulled as far as I could and held for ten seconds, I heard my physical therapist’s voice, “When you pull your knee toward you and it hurts, breathe out.” So I did and in that moment, my mind drifted to yoga and to the poses I love. Warrior I and Warrior II, poses that once took time, patience, ...

  Tonight, my neighbor and I were walking our dogs when we stopped at the corner. A black Jeep pulled up, and a woman stepped out in a beautiful red dress, holding a matching scarf. “Excuse me,” she said, “I’m meeting my father for dinner—it’s his 86th birthday. Would one of you mind tying this scarf around my dress?” My friend held the leashes, and I tied the scarf. As I adjusted it, she told us the dress had belonged to a dear friend who had recently passed away. Every time she wears it, she remembers her. And there we were, three women who had never met, standing on a street corner, helping each other without hesitation. I didn't think it was unusual. There’s something about women… we stop, we trust, we help. No explanation needed. We wished her father a happy birthday, and she went on her way and we continued our walk. Sometimes connection looks like a conversation. Sometimes it’s something as simple as tying a red scarf.

  Each morning I wake up and think this will be the day I feel great, the day I bounce out of bed. And then I limp to the kitchen. The day unfolds. I meet friends for lunch, enjoy the conversation, feel like myself again… and then struggle a bit to stand when it’s time to leave. It’s humbling. Healing doesn’t happen all at once. It comes in small steps. Moments of normalcy followed by reminders that my body is struggling to find a way back. So I remind myself… baby steps. Patience. Because even on the harder days, I am still moving forward.

  Yesterday I found myself thinking about the ten year old girl I used to be. Today my thoughts moved forward again into another stage of life and what love has meant along the way. It’s funny how our minds sometimes wander back to earlier chapters of our lives. Moments when everything felt new and full of possibility. Like springtime. There is a kind of ache or yearning that can come with those memories, and for the longest time I couldn’t quite name it. Maybe it is my age now but I think I figured it out. Sometimes the yearning we feel when we look back at earlier moments in our lives isn’t about another person at all. It’s about who we were when we were living in that moment. It’s about missing the version of ourselves who lived there. There was an innocence and openness in that time. A belief in possibilities that felt natural and unguarded. So it isn't always about missing another person. For me it's missing the young woman who believed so fully in what life and love mig...

Ten-year-old me. This little girl didn’t know it then, but the love she felt on Sunday afternoons would stay with her for a lifetime.   When I was a little girl, I couldn’t wait to grow up. Birthdays couldn’t come fast enough. Getting my driver’s license. Turning 21. First boyfriend. Finishing college and starting work. It all felt like a race toward the next milestone. Now, especially as I recover from surgery and life has slowed down a bit, I find myself traveling back to earlier days. Lately my mind has been returning to small moments from my childhood when I lived at home with my parents and sister. Rainy days. Halloween costumes. And recently, Sunday afternoons. Today as the clouds rolled in and I couldn’t get outside, I remembered the Sundays of ten-year-old me. After church, my mother would stop at the local bakery and pick up a loaf of sliced rye bread, a few hard rolls, and sometimes a crumb cake. When we got home, the “play clothes” came out and our Sunday outfits a...

  A friend had a transplant two days ago. What he is going through is enormous and life-saving. It reminded me that everywhere you look, people are carrying something — a biopsy, a transplant, recovery from surgery, or simply finding their way through a difficult season. In each case, helping the recovery are the prayers and grace of family and friends.  We all move forward the same way, one step at a time. Today mine was walking the dog, a first since January.