Hi Y’all, I’m Beth
I’m Beth Gramling Sanders, an empty nester, married since 1986, and mom of two wonderful grown women.
Way geekier than most women my age, along with my oldest daughter, Elizabeth, I stood in line for 12 hours in 2007 for the very first iPhone.
Hi Y’all, I’m Beth
I’m an empty nester, way geekier than most women my age. I consider myself too old to be a hipster and too young at heart to be a geezer. I’m a Christ follower, life-long St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan, crossword puzzle nerd, wordsmith and all-around technology freak and early adopter.
I was a stay-at-home mom for 14 years, as my husband, Jim, and I raised our two daughters. I enjoy my girls as adults more than I ever dreamed and love being free from enforcing curfew, nagging about homework, and throwing down a four-course dinner every night.
This blog is my personal thoughts and insights on life, family, faith, the expression of experiences and wisdom gained through 60+ years of life, and things I enjoy.
My professional self is on my website, aptly named BethGSanders.com.
Latest Post
What Weird Times These Are
Oh, boy. Please, 2022, be better than (at least the last part of) 2021. I'm looking back over the past month or so and thinking that if I tried to write it as a story, any decent editor would reject it as far too improbable. Here's a (not so) quick timeline: November...
A Parent’s Paradox
When you become a parent, you sign up for a life of mixed emotions. You want them to sit up, but you know you'll miss holding them. You want them to walk, but you fear they'll fall and hit their head. You want them to go to school, but it means they will leave you. It...
Don’t Teach Them to Hate
I'm not a big movie person. There are not many movies I've seen in a theater in the past 10 years, and only a few that I've seen on DVD. Occasionally a film will come along that I think is worth seeing, and 42 is one of my favorites ever. No, not just because it's a...
Why My Faith Won’t Let Me Be OK With the Death Penalty
I'm taking a deep breath now. The way you would inhale right before you jump out of an airplane (which I'll never do). While I won't take a physical leap at 10,000 feet, I'm taking a bit of a psychological one here, because I'm about to express an opinion on a...
Blue
Just yesterday, I marveled at the fact that I didn’t feel a bit blue this week. The first two weeks in June are always difficult, as the anniversaries of two loved ones lost occur within days of one another; my sister-in-law (killed in a car accident June 9, 1999) and...
The Meaning in the Ink
My mother is an incredible woman (This is not her arm). She's a registered nurse, and was one of the first nursing instructors at Arkansas State University when the program was new. After she left nursing, she was a stay-at-home mother for many years, though active in...
Letting Go — and Letting Go for Real
Throughout our girls' college years, we moved each of them at least three times. From home to dorm, dorm to apartment, and from apartment back home. Today our oldest, Elizabeth, 25, moved again. This one is for real. In fact, as I write this, she's driving a U-Haul,...
RIP Uncle Larry
I was sitting at the hair salon with foils in my hair when I picked up my phone and saw the text message from my cousin letting me know that my uncle had passed away early that morning. After I caught my breath, I texted my girls to let them know that the great uncle...
Being and Becoming
It's weird when my birthday is on Thanksgiving Day. My birthday is the one day each year when I give myself permission to be a little selfish and indulgent. I get control of the remote, choice of meals, and I don't do dishes, laundry, or any other housework. I love...
Morning By Morning
Tuesday, February 19, about 8:45 a.m. Just a bit more than nine months ago. I was about to leave for work when my phone rang. I recognized the number as Jim's old cell number and wondered why on earth he was using it to call me. The answer came when I accepted the...
The World Series. For Real.
I'm at a World Series game. No, really. Game 4 at Busch Stadium. Cardinal baseball isn't just my obsession, it's a family tradition. And to baseball-obsessed folk, the World Series is pretty much the ultimate dream. When I found out I was going, thanks entirely to the...
Colors of Life
I'm blessed with amazing friends, who are black white Christian Jewish atheist Muslim gay straight bi transsexual empty nesters parents of small children parents of teenagers childless geeks technophobes luddites conservative liberal young middle-aged old reserved...
How to Dice an Onion Like a Doctor
My brother-in-law is an incredible cook. If he weren't an excellent physician, he'd own a restaurant and be a highly-regarded chef, I'm sure. So when he has tips for how to do something in the kitchen, I always listen. Here, he's demonstrating how he dices an onion....
Funk.
Funk has at least three meanings: it is defined as a genre of music, a foul smell, or a dejected mood. I'm kind of familiar with the first definition, all-too acquainted with the second (we have dogs, remember?) and am currently experiencing the third. I've thought...
What Baseball was Like in the 1960s and 1970s
My passion for baseball began at an early age and grew, as each year our family headed to St. Louis for a series, usually in July, which is just as miserable in St. Louis as it was in Arkansas. But I loved the Cardinals more than I hated the heat, and looked forward...
RIP Sweet Molly Girl: 14 Years of Love
In happier days — she loved playing with this foam football. She'd bring it to us over and over until we got tired of throwing. One of the worst things about being a grownup is having to do hard things. We did one of those things today. Our beloved 14-year-old...
On the Occasion of His 20th Anniversary in Heaven
Daddy and Jim were always talking about camaras. I've noticed for the past week or so that I've felt inexplicably blue. Even though they come around every year, somehow the anniversaries always seems to sneak up on me. In 1993, my dad passed away suddenly on June 13,...
Social Media, Tornadoes, and Sirens
I admit I'm particularly freaky about thunderstorms, and when the tornado sirens go off, my blood pressure tends to riseprecipitously as the barometric pressure falls. I was raised in Jonesboro, Arkansas in the 1960s and `70s. That was during the time that CB radios...
The Last of New York. And Home.
I shot a bit of video with my phone throughout our trip and sort of mashed it together here. (Remember, I'm not a video expert. I just have an iPhone and iMovie.) Sunday brought steady rain and cool temperatures, so Mom just decided to hang in the room before we went...