Anna M. Aquino

            On Friday one of my very best friends and I took my daughters into Amish country.  It was the last day of their Spring Break, and it seemed like a good day trip. My youngest daughter wanted desperately to ride in a buggy behind a horse.  We weren’t sure where we could take her, but on our last stop it just so happened that in the parking lot there was an enterprising Amish family who had a small petting zoo, and buggy rides.              Our buggy driver was a precious older Amish man named Abe.  He had a long white beard and wisdom in his eyes.  He took us around his farm.  He began point out to the farms around the area.             “I grew up at that farm.” He pointed to a nearby building.  “My wife grew up at that one.”  He smiled and slowly I could see a smile b...

While my family and I were spending time with my parents in Ohio, I was reminded of a valuable lesson. My daddy all through growing up would jokingly call my sister and I “skunkypoleon’s”. We would wail and giggle and say we weren’t, and it was a big game in father daughter land. I never thought to ask what it was; it just was something I was sure I wasn’t. Now that my sister and I have our own children, daddy does the same thing with them. For several days I could hear my daughters and nieces’ go back and forth that they weren’t skunkypoleon’s. In the car driving to an Amish store the game with my daughters continued. Daddy was calling them skunkypoleon’s and likewise they were saying he was one. Then wisdom from the back of the car piped up in the words of my oldest daughter. “Grandpa? What is a skunkypolen anyway?” I paused laughing and turned to her. I had never thought to ask what one was. All eyes turned to my dad waiting for a response. Surely after all these years of skunkypole...