My mother, by all counts, is an exceptional woman. One of her many talents is her ability to not only craft the perfect telling of a story, but to express it on paper just as it exists in her head.

It goes without saying that my talent for writing came from her, just as my talent for calmly making sense from utter chaos came from my father.

Last year, my Mom left her position as a Staff Reporter at the Morning Call; a newspaper office I had quite literally grown up in. Not so much in the sense that my diapers were changed, more so that I changed. I saw the hours of dull typing and editing in-between the brief moments of furious “on the scene” activity and the countless miles drifting past the car window for a five minute interview.

I learned that this was work and that the slight smile of satisfaction on my mother’s face as she read her article before submitting it made the drudgery worth it. I learned how to be happy about my accomplishments, no matter what their overall impact.

Mom carried this concept with her no matter where she was and no matter what she was doing. She took a job at a smaller, less “corporate” newspaper; earning far less in wages but gaining something far greater in importance. She gained time. She gained freedom. She gained the ability to write stories that she wanted to write and eventually, she was given a column.

The first installment is below:

We Will Come

Byline By CHRIS PARKER

Byline cparker@tnonline.com

It’s early Sunday morning, and I’m sitting on my front porch. Steam rises from the mug of coffee that’s warming my hands, and in the kitchen, dough is rising in the warmth of the coal stove for the bread that will grace the table at our weekly family dinner.

Threads of thin sunlight filter through the trees, and, after giving God thanks for another beautiful day, I set down my empty mug and venture out for a mosey.

The ground is cold and hard against my feet, the air chill and damp and the sky a sullen gray.

But to my delight, pale green shoots, the advance guard of a platoon of golden daffodils, have broken through the ground next to the porch steps, and I can see subtle changes in the buds on the lilac and forsythia.

Winter, finally, is warming to the promise of spring.

Brighter, warmer days are coming, but sometimes it can be hard to see the signs as we hunker down, waiting for the icy grip of an especially harsh economic winter to loosen.

Like the age-old rhythm of the seasons, financial cycles are nothing new. In this winter, though, our monetary climate is approaching a deep-freeze not seen since the Great Depression.

Hardworking mothers and fathers are being rooted from jobs. Their incomes gone, many families are losing their homes. With no jobs, there is no money to spend, and so businesses are plowed under. The economy stills, becomes fallow.

But, as have the lilacs, forsythia and daffodils, we will survive this frozen dormancy. We will come back, to grow and produce.

During the Great Depression, when a quarter of our workforce was jobless, the prospects were far more dire; life was far harder. There was no federal insurance on bank accounts. There were no food stamps, no government assistance for heating or cash support, no free school lunches or breakfasts.

And yet, somehow, we survived. In fact, we thrived with the help of families and caring neighbors; we supported each other and grew strong.

Children raised during those hard years, when food was scarce, when shoes were saved for school and church and when homes went unheated save for the coal picked alongside railroad tracks, grew up to become the Greatest Generation.

Grown in that rocky soil, they became hardy perennials, building strength and character as they forged ahead together against adversity.

They sacrificed lives to World War II, sacrificed unnecessary spending and worked hard to buy and keep modest homes - "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" was an oft-heard phrase - sacrificed their own wants to raise civil children and sacrificed leisure time do volunteer work for the good of all.

But somehow, ‘twixt then and now, too many of us have become fragile hothouse flowers, self-absorbed and obsessed with having every big, shiny new bauble we see, with having it all, and having it all now.

Oh, what a hard lesson we are learning as we shiver through this winter.

"To know you have enough is to be rich," Lao-Tzu once said.

Wise words, indeed.

While it’s too early to tell when our own economic spring will arrive, we must forge ahead with gratitude for our safety nets, for each other, and for the lessons taught by those who made it through that other winter.

Maybe, if we take them to heart, those lessons will enable us to again not only survive, but thrive so that we can teach our children what they need not only to make it through harsh winters, but to better appreciate the warm summer sun.