Tag: family

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17 – Where’s my mail?

Alice Delaney Walker, aka Dana Walker

  Maybe my friends lost my address?  But I always write my address on every letter.  I learned that years ago when a friend’s excuse was she didn’t know my address. So where’s my mail? Maybe my letters didn’t reach them?  But I received my VISA bill! And my bank statement, so where’s my mail?  It must be lost, somewhere between here and there. Maybe they forgot to put enough overseas air-mail postage on the letter and it was returned? Maybe they used the country’s initials and the mail was rerouted to Ireland, Canada or Egypt as one of my … Continue reading 17 – Where’s my mail?

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16 – The Journey of a Modern Nomad: Embracing Change and Adventure

Alice Delaney Walker, aka Dana Walker

  “You’ve got itchy feet,” a friend said to me.             “No,” I said, “I feel it in my stomach.” From two to 18, I lived  “in the sticks” as my Chicago cousins called Des Plaines. I saw the sidewalks laid by the neighbourhood fathers, the dirt roads tarred, schools built, cornfields turned into suburbia, the natural lake landscaped and countrified, a K-Mart discount shopping mall built nearby and I had climbed all the climbable trees on my block.  One house. One street. One town. Sixteen years. I wanted out. Since then I’ve moved nearly every two years.   “I’m … Continue reading 16 – The Journey of a Modern Nomad: Embracing Change and Adventure

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Guns and Generosity: Eid Celebrations in UAE

Alice Delaney Walker, aka Dana Walker

I had helped a student who was partially blind last year and he invited me to join his family on the Eid holiday. I couldn’t so he telephoned and told me about the day.   “We go to the mosque and everyone brings their most valuable possession….” he said. “What do they bring?” I asked He tried to avoid answering. I repeated the question.  I could almost see him lower his face, “Their guns.  Some have old ones, some have machine guns.” “Machine guns?” I shouted.  “Men carry machine guns to the mosque!” I have to remind myself that tribal disputes … Continue reading Guns and Generosity: Eid Celebrations in UAE

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Women Drivers – 11

Alice Delaney Walker, aka Dana Walker

   Only women should be allowed to drive.  Men’s biological urge for speed, their quest to overcome all obstacles on the road and their passionate self-absorption once in front of the wheel has littered the road with blood, heartache and years of pain which only a faith in God can heal. “Write about something wonderful or terrible,” I suggested to my students. I received paper after paper describing bloody car accidents.  Never had I known so many young people to have witnessed such carnage. The first time I seriously sat in the driver’s seat, the instructor described all the things … Continue reading Women Drivers – 11

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75-Day Summer Break – 7

Alice Delaney Walker, aka Dana Walker

    March 8, 1990   Remember planning last year’s summer holiday?  We teachers have the lavish leisure of a 75-day paid summer holiday. But wait!  Like swamp lots sold in Florida or some property in India, such a lengthy holiday may be a golden time to destroy one’s finances and wreck one’s nerves. Staying home in the Gulf isn’t my first choice. My friends leave town and there aren’t any movies playing at wide-screen theatres.  Bicycling, jogging, camping or Hashing don’t seem inviting. One summer I spent a month on the French Riviera. The franc was nine to a … Continue reading 75-Day Summer Break – 7