Marsha's Blog

 Making Bad Choices (Note to Reader: Continuing this journey down Memory Lane, I thought I’d share a blog from 2017. Enjoy!) Over the years as I’ve tried to plan out the rest of my life, I don’t think I ever pictured myself sitting flat in the gutter in our local tourist night spot. But there I was, sitting beside our grandson while he held his head between his knees. It all started with a birthday promise. When our oldest grandson turned 7 a few weeks ago, we gave him a necktie (and found out that what he really wanted a whole grown up suit). Along with the tie was a promise that, having now reached the age of perfection, he would be given the treat of a night out to a fancy sit down restaurant. We were all excited. Well, this part of Australia is currently in the middle of a newsworthy heat wave, so the necktie didn’t happen on either of the men, but we were all dressed ‘smart’ and were in pretty high spirits as we pulled out from his house. Now for some time, our family slogan has b

 (Note to reader: This is another in our series of “River Crossing” blogs, written while we were in Thailand (2009 -2011). Enjoy!) In Bangkok we don’t have a car. That means we have a variety of transportation options at our disposal. We try to walk most everywhere, but of course we often go further than the neighborhood. Most of the time I feel quite blessed to be able to raise my hand wherever I am and a sleek A/C taxi pulls up. Then the fun begins: will he speak any English, will he understand my Thai, will he go 90miles an hour thru the streets, or will he take the ‘back way’ thus running up the fare? Other modes for movement are the famous ‘sky train’ that is clean and cool, but bastioned above hundreds of steps, making it nearly as much work getting to as the trip itself. Besides that, it’s pretty limited in where it goes. There are buses and a subway, but we haven’t really demystified those yet. Where do you get on? How do you get off? What does it cost? With all the canals in B

 More Than Ice Cream (This is another in the series of blogs from “River Crossings”, several years ago. Enjoy!) Let me tell you about a girl I met this week. Her name is Fon (pronounced ‘fawn’) and she came to see me with another girl I was meeting for the first time. Let me back up. The “other girl” had rung me the night before. She got my name from a mutual acquaintance of ours in Japan. She is new in town and a bit lonely, so I said, “Look, even though my kids are coming for a visit this week and between them and language study we don’t have a minute to spare, come to the Dairy Queen on Sunday afternoon after your church service and we’ll at least get to see your face.” A few of our folks like to go there after the three-hour Thai church service for a taste of “home”. She did, and brought her new friend that she had met on the bus going to church. Fon sat down and seemed relieved that a few of us around the table could speak a few words of Thai. She began to share her story with a c

 Dear Readers, Here is the next in the series of blogs taken from the book, “River Crossings”, a journal of our time in Bangkok more than a decade ago. Several folks last week assumed that what they read was “today’s news” and so assumed that I was about to be a grandmother again! Time marches on …   Have you ever stood on the beach and let the waves lap at your feet? You might notice that after a few waves your feet have disappeared and even though they’re still there, they’re now buried in sand. Well, that’s like riding the commuter train every morning in Bangkok. You get in, which in itself looks like an undoable task till others start pushing from behind. Then with each consecutive station, the ‘waves’ of people push you further and further into the sands of humanity. By now your feet have disappeared as well as your husband and you pray for something to lean against or at least a place to hang on. That’s where I found myself the other day. I was blissfully shoved up against one of