Verna K Gunderson
Bio
I'm an ESL online Teacher whose life and stories thrive on the creative imaginations of life and children. A picture painted or a story written are both built with the brushes that hold the many colors picked up throughout our lives. Bravo!
Stories (20)
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Life Hidden in the Shadows
Shadows generate stories, and questions. Photographs catch many details, but not complete stories. With a shrug I wondered who was on the boat that day. For me it’s the shadows that tell a story in as much clarity as the remaining image. Shadows always make me personally sad because while they distort reality, they are as fleeting as life itself, and sometimes that’s all we have to hang on to.
By Verna K Gundersonabout a year ago in Photography
Shaken, but not stirred in 2024
We all seem to take a seat at the end of the year like we are all waiting in the dark theater for some allusive closure on the ‘what was’, followed by a few hope-filled previews into the ‘what will be’. This end of year review for me has always seemed to start with the ‘if onlys’ remembering certain regrets. What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? What did I learn for this challenge or that struggle?
By Verna K Gundersonabout a year ago in Beat
It isn't magic, the Rubik's Cube...
I read today that there are 43,000,000,000,000 ways to solve the Rubik’s Cube, so there must be more than one way to solve all of life’s issues too. And I only need one. How many do you need? I don’t want to build another puzzle. I only want to simplify the one I have. For me that means discarding the broken pieces left when one piece fell, shattering all that was left. From that which is discarded comes the most beautiful of gardens because those tiny shards were nothing more than the seeds of the best of what is yet to come.
By Verna K Gunderson3 years ago in Journal
B in the Air
We drove up the snowy, winding road towards the cozy A-frame cabin. Yet, the we was a habit of speech that needed breaking because there was no we. It was only me. After raising children for decades, the we had shifted to a silent corridor of possibilities. The bottles were all passed down to the next generation and the skinned knees were long healed.
By Verna K Gunderson3 years ago in Families
The Light of Shinto
Chandra was so old that she had outlived all of her kind. On any given day you could find her slumbering under the lambkin tree in the center of Little Mandreattica. When a dragon ages, like the humans that dared not roam the forests of Little Mandreattica, one could almost hear the creaking of the joints above the methodical rumble of the snoring beast. With every inhale, the spaces around the joints would open and the returning exhale would send the joints into a rattling drumroll.
By Verna K Gunderson3 years ago in Fiction
Penbroke in Shiasta
There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Yet, there they were, separating the good from the bad and everything else that was neither. In the valley between Penbroke and Shiasta lay the foundations of what was once a mighty nation. No one knew what lie to the East of Penbroke or to the West of Shiasta, they only knew the fine line that separated them was blurred by the rubble of Zena. The dragons prowled around day and night and not a soul from Shiasta knew what was in Penbroke or beyond any more than any from Penbroke knew what was on the other side of Shiasta. Ironically, those on either side were so focused on where they could not go, they never turned around to see what was behind them. It was as though time stood still at the dragons bidding.
By Verna K Gunderson4 years ago in Fiction
When one can smell the bull...
Have you ever read the sign: Can you spare a buck? God bless you. As I make my way across America to do what is right by generations previous to me, I wonder as I reach out to help my aging parents, who will help me? I am currently a graduate student, a mother, a wife, a daughter, an aunt, a grandmother, and a sister-in-law. After 37 years of practice in child-rearing with 24 1/2 years between oldest and youngest, what do I have to show for it except wrinkles, gray hair, and changing seasons?
By Verna K Gunderson4 years ago in Families
No until it's yes.
It is said that the answer is no unless one asks. Have you ever found a minute of bravery to simply ask a question? I often wonder how my life would have evolved had I have asked more questions. What would have been removed and trimmed? I made such a call a few days ago to DOT asking them about two trees growing nicely in my front yard that was shared by the state. They had said that they could indeed take them down, but yet they remained, for two years they remained.
By Verna K Gunderson4 years ago in Journal
Herbert and Sofia
Have you ever wanted to turn back the time to just to save one person who could have sent your life into a different trajectory? I know I have. Each of our lives are interwoven in the net of life. Some catches turn putrid before the new day arrives and others just stew into a sweet fragrance, but neither has the power to manifest a known change for generations past the first cast. Three days ago, marked the 110 anniversaries of such a cast. In a matter of three hours, my life was changed. My inheritance that I did not realize I might have had sank to the bottoms of the frigid Artic. The inheritance that might have saved my husband in need of a heart transplant. It was not until last year that I even knew I had lost it. The Titanic was the ship of opulence; the ship that could not sink; the ship that sank my life because one spouse lived, and one spouse died.
By Verna K Gunderson4 years ago in Fiction
