Julie,

Happy Anniversary! Unfortunately I bring to our marriage today no more than I bought six years ago. I’m sorry about that. Someday I hope to be able too offer you more. You’ve been so patient.
Somehow it seems we always have hope and each other. The children enrich our marriage but only if we are together ourselves and receptive to our blessings.
This little note could be filled with your virtues but you do not believe me anyway when I tell you about them. But instead let me tell you what the girls and I have now that we would not have had we not met you.
You’ve been so gentle with us. You’ve softly answered our questions and more.

Your warm body with sleepy eyes
Has accepted us into your bed with
Welcome abandon, hugging
Our day begins securely with
The knowledge of our return
To our solace
WE have grown from your rays
We have life from your rain
We have hope from your faith
To list the times and places
Memories, memories
That you have given to us
We recognize and responds to you
Only you, only you
So much Julie to know
Sixty more years so!

I do want to comment on our poverty. We will have all we want, Ergo, why worry about what we don’t have. I have the three things that money could never touch, J.K.E.

Thank you

FXC, KMC, EBC

FXC 9/13/75

In the multi-colored coat of my life

You were my fabric

So often I would see or hear you laugh

And know that all was right in the world

Always taken for granted

Because you placed yourself last.

You knew only to care and to give

Never tro ask

Already I hear by phone and by note

Of your unending joy

That you share with all

Oh Tom, Tom I miss you so

You and I always said I love you

When the conversation ended

But I am still talking to you

Do you hear?

That is where my faith lies

You always hear

I know you do now

You have not gone far

I have kept you in my heart

Your work here contiues

In we who you have blessed

Bring us this day the joy you now know

Bring us this day the vision you now see

Finally, Tom my dear brother

Reveal to us your peace

March 2005

I wish I were your TV

That you watch

Ardently

Or even a grandchild

That you hold even

With your eyes

But what is so sad

Is that when I am next to you

I am glad

FXC  3/7/08

Acorns

Oak trees shed an average of five thousand acorns a year
So I’m told by Google or a source from Google
So it has a pretty good chance of being believable
I have two oak trees on my property
One in the back and one in the front
On our quarter acre lot
Ten thousand acorns a year
The oak trees were planted in 1961
It is 2015
Fifty four years of dropping acorns
Five hundred and forty thousand acorns
Now we have only lived in this house seven years
So technically we can only be held accountable for seventy thousand
So what is to be done with these acorns
Not too many options
Well we could take the trees down and excavate the yard to remove them
We could put cloth under the trees to catch the acorns
but of course that would only catch the current dropping acorns
We could bring in as many squirrels as we could
Ands we have done that
We could get down on our hands and knees and try to dig them up
One by one or rake them up as fast as we can
This seems to be a trick of Mother Nature
Enough acorns are dropping to ensure that no one could
Dig up all the acorns
Ensuring that oak trees would live forever
But we are not going to live forever
Some day we might be right next to all those acorns
You don’t think they wold talk to us
Do ya?
I can just hear them saying
‘I told you, that you were wasting your time
That soon enough you would be right down here with us’
Mother Nature takes care of us
Why don’t you let her take care of you
Grab your coffee and sit on that olds red bench
With your wife
Why don’t you two
Talk about the weather and all
Those damm acorns falling
Talk about the wonderful life you had
An still have
Talk about how bad the approaching winter might be
We have been here a long time
You all don’t have quite that long
Talk now
While you have someone to listen

FXC 10/19/2015