Annabelle Reed Ibsen

Love For Her Family

On that sunny morning as I sipped coffee and watched yellow daffodils in the back yard, tossing their heads in sprightly dance, my thoughts were not on life bursting forth on that spring day, but on death. A year had passed since cancer ended my mother’s life. While gazing at pictures of her on the breakfast table, a quote came to mind: “Little things make big things happen.” Once when I asked Dad, a college English teacher, why the quote was taped to his laptop, he explained that it reminded him to teach grammar’s fundamentals thoroughly with the aim of achieving clear, effective composition — the “big thing.”