The post on the “Caring Bridge” website was sobering.

“Kinley, the baby girl in the room directly across from Lily is being taken off the list today. They are turning off all machines. Kinley will die today. Surely she will be a guardian angel for the other children on the unit. Please pray for her family.”

The post came from Lily’s parents, Michael and Cheyenne. Lily is their 9-month-old daughter who was born with CMV, a common virus that causes chickenpox and shingles.

It’s harmless unless the baby is infected before birth. If that’s the case, the child can develop serious health problems. In Lily’s case, this cruel and silent virus destroyed the left side of her heart.

Michael and Cheyenne found themselves in a New Orleans hospital a few weeks ago receiving news that would devastate any parent – their baby daughter needed a heart transplant or she wouldn’t make it.

Most of us never have to face a life-and-death operation like this for our children. I cannot imagine what those young parents felt like as they watched their daughter struggle to live.

In Lily’s case, a human heart became available almost immediately, and Lily became a donor recipient. In the midst of their joy, Michael and Cheyenne asked for prayers for the family who’d lost their child.

Lily’s been slowly improving since the transplant, and we all feel a mixture of elation for Michael and Cheyenne and admiration for all the heartbreaking decisions they’ve had to make in the last four months.

Before I had children, I dreamed of all the fun activities we’d have together – dressing up for holidays, coloring together and going to the park to fly kites. It never occurred to me that along with the fun times would also come tough situations.

Those include frantic trips to the hospital emergency room and the terror a high fever brings when it’s 2 a.m. and you’re the one your baby is depending on to take care of business.

Parents face hundreds of unexpected moments in their child’s life, the ones where things are normal one minute and hanging in the balance the next.

Those start the minute they get here, and we kid ourselves into thinking the day will come when we’ll no longer worry about our offspring.

When they’re infants and cry inconsolably, we worry because we don’t know what’s wrong. Those nights last forever, as do the nights when they’re young children and they’re crying because of a stomach ache.

Then there are the nights when they’re adolescents, worried about their appearance or that they don’t have any friends. They turn into teens, and we worry about drugs, alcohol and premarital sex.

Every day, parents wonder where they’re going to find the strength to be an effective mom or dad. The parenting books don’t mention what to do about a tired that seeps through your bones.

They don’t offer solutions to feeling like you want to scream at the top of your lungs in frustration. They don’t tell you what to do when you receive news that your child could be facing a terrifying health issue and you have to make difficult decisions.

Books don’t tell parents what to do when they grapple for the answers with every ounce of strength in their bodies. We ask friends, family and experts to help us make a decision, but our children, whether they’re 9 months old or facing mid-life, are where we find the answers.

With one hug and one smile, we find the strength to go on without a moments’ hesitation and know that the tough decision is usually the right one. Because no matter what cards we’re dealt when a child is put into our arms, we will play that hand and never, ever fold.

In Michael and Cheyenne’s case, they’ve always known they had a winning hand with Baby Lily who’s getting better every day, thanks to a difficult decision another set of parents had to make.

They found the strength to give the gift of life to another child. And for that heart-wrenching decision, we are eternally grateful.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Driving home from work today, my little sedan battling ferocious winds, the meteorologist on the radio confirmed my suspicion – colder temperatures are barreling toward southeast Texas.

After a brutal summer of 100-plus degree temperatures and a lingering and crippling drought, most people would be glad the temperatures are dipping into the upper 40’s over the next few nights.

Not me.

I grew up near Buffalo, N.Y., living with snow for six months out of the year. After we moved to the South, my blood thinned out, and I cannot take cold temperatures anymore. I thrive in the summer and whine my way through the winter.

When cold weather does roll into town, it means I have to find the few winter items I own. I put off hauling out those cold-temperature clothes until the mercury hits 50. According to the weatherman, the day of reckoning has arrived.

Sighing, I started rifling through my closet to see where I stand. I have a pair of blue jeans I wear in the summer and the winter. They’re light-weight denim because I refuse to wear pants that weigh more than a bag of potatoes.

Underneath the jeans I discover my favorite winter clothes – sweat pants. Avant-garde fashion designers turn their noses up at sweat pants, but I don’t know what I’d do without my baggy sweats to get me through the winter.

One pair is gray, and they’re worn on the knees, but quite serviceable. The other pair is blue, still decorated with the beige paint I used on my son’s bedroom about 10 years ago and the silver paint I used on my youngest boy’s bedroom five years earlier. Both go on top of the winter pile.

Let’s see – there’s a couple of pairs of black jeans in the back of the closet I can wear to dress up, so I should be all set in the pants department.

Now for shirts – I wear T-shirts year round because I avoid long-sleeved shirts like the plague. The cuffs somehow find their way in my lunch and serve as a magnet for every speck of dust and dirt I walk past.

That’s probably an exaggeration, but I’ve come up with a reason why I dislike winter clothes.

Sweaters are too itchy, turtlenecks are too suffocating and scarves, well, they’re just too frou-frou. Usually I throw a sweater over my T-shirts because I can toss that aside, and I run fast from my car to the front door so I avoid wearing a jacket.

There is one area, though, where I can’t avoid the winter fashions – shoes.

Oh how I miss my summer shoes in the winter. Summer footwear consists of lively colors, breezy open toes and slip-ons in every color of the rainbow.

For some reason, shoe manufacturers think all women love to wear boots in the winter, and store shelves are filled with dozens of boots in two colors – black and brown.

Unfortunately, I have thin calves, and my legs roll around in boots like a 5-year-old playing dress up, so I’m stuck buying sensible winter shoes that look like something my first grade teacher, Sister Adrian wore.

Reluctantly I dragged out a pair of black and brown tie-up shoes and wistfully tossed my sandals in the back of the closet.

But in every cold cloud there’s a silver lining.

Socks.

Because winter clothes are so drab, I have socks in every color of the rainbow. Of course, most of them have holes in the toes and heels, but I don’t care. Those dowdy winter shoes cover up the holes, and I love having some color in my wardrobe when it’s stark and bare outside.

Even though it’s blustery outside, hope springs eternal in we warm-blooded creatures. I’m going to leave out a few summer clothes for those warm winter days and circle the vernal equinox, March 20, 2012, on my calendar.

I want to be ready to walk out the door wearing my shorts, T-shirts and sandals when those hot-and-humid Texas temperatures finally return.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

My mailbox stays filled with sales fliers, postcards from digital television companies wanting our business and, my favorite, magazines.

Curling up on the couch with a magazine is a great way to relax, and I love any kind of magazine which is probably the reason I get about six different publications every month.

When I was young, I remember flipping through the beautiful “Life” and “Look” magazines my grandparents had on their coffee table, and I was fascinated by the black-and-white war photos and those of the Kennedy family.

The boys always snickered when flipping through “National Geographic.” They were only looking for the pictures of naked tribes people.

But “National Geographic” wasn’t about exploitation – the magazine was and is about introducing people to the wonders of the world through stunningly beautiful photographs.

The covers are just a sampling of the wonders inside the pages. Nowhere else can one see such fantastic pictures of majestic mountains, hidden lakes and the open plains that make Earth such a beautiful planet.

The stories are extremely well written, and the authors not only describe geography, they give readers a glimpse of how people and animals live, think and survive. These wordsmiths – often writing on a laptop from an igloo or a hut – can make the life cycles of fleas and the Incas equally interesting.

A magazine I’ve subscribed to for over 20 years is “Better Homes and Gardens.” My mom had a well-used copy of the BHG red-checked cookbook in the kitchen and getting the magazine seemed appropriate as I headed off into adulthood.

Although I still enjoy the magazine, most of the decorating articles are for people who love stark contemporary homes, and the gardening articles are geared toward the northeast or the Pacific Coast.

Few of us south of the Mason-Dixon line can grow lilies of the valley in our gardens nor can we leave cushions on outdoor furniture – the mildew, brutal heat or the dogs will make short work of those.

So, for the first time in two decades, I’m letting my subscription lapse because I want to read something that has meaning to me.

Hence the reason “Southern Living” is at the top of my favorite magazine reading list. The articles are about the South – grits and ham hocks, azaleas and pine trees and buttermilk biscuits. There aren’t feature stories about multi-million dollar mansions on the Pacific coast or how to protect the home against an ice storm.

The articles in “Southern Living” are about people who live with 100 percent humidity, year-round air conditioning, beauty salons and dominos.

Their readers are constantly searching for the best way to sprinkle Louisiana-grown Tabasco sauce over every dish at a back-yard barbecue and the best flea markets in Texas and Alabama.

Over the past few years, I’ve moved away from the magazines that concentrate on fashion and make-up. I’ve become a fan of practical magazines like “Real Simple” and Oprah Winfrey’s “O” magazine.

My friend, Pat, gave me a subscription to “O” right after the magazine started publication, and it’s been one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.

The layouts are creative, and the pictures are first rate. Fashion spreads feature clothes that fit the average gal who shops at Target and the mall, not a size 0 model wearing eight-inch heels and fishnet stockings.

The best part of any magazine, however, is the writing, and “Southern Living” and “O” feature talented authors who write from their hearts.

“Southern Living’s” Rick Bragg entertains readers with his thoughts on growing up with shrimp fests and crawfish boils, and “O” readers find articles from women who’ve overcome cancer, rebuilt after losing their home to a natural disaster or simply survived a teething toddler.

Oprah always closes the magazines with her thoughts, and she retains her connection with those of us who wrestle with static cling, extra pounds and whether or not we’re good enough.

Though the pages of magazines, we find our kindred souls and, through that connection, we know we’re not alone.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Most people can feel a cold coming on for days. There’s that nasty tickle in the back of the throat, the beginnings of a stuffy nose or the start of a mild cough.

Not me.

Whenever a cold strikes, it’s a sudden storm-the-beach assault by a legion of nasty viruses looking for someone to beat up. In a matter of hours, I am down for the count, losing the battle and not caring that the enemy’s winning.

Luckily, I don’t get sick very often and I’m back to normal in a day or so.

The trade off for not being sick long is that for those 24 hours, I feel like I’ve been mauled by a Mack truck that not only ran over me but then put that 18-wheeler into reverse and came back to finish the job.

My fever spikes, I ache all over and I’m hot and cold. But no matter how bad I feel, I always follow the same routine for getting over the crud quickly.

First, make room on the couch because staying on the couch is more comfortable than staying in bed.

With a cold washcloth on my head, a box of tissues hugged close to my chest and the remote control in my right hand, I become one with the couch while the battle rages.

I don’t want to talk to anyone. I want to be left alone with reruns of “I Love Lucy” and doze on and off until the cold or tummy virus runs its course.

The couch is where my sons camped out when they were sick, and they coped with being stuck on the couch quite differently than their mother.

They liked being pampered. I remember tucking blankets around them, getting their favorite pillow from their room and then constantly refilling water glasses and taking their temperature every hour because they were all was convinced their fever was high enough to require an emergency trip to the hospital.

And of course there was the moaning and groaning – them from the couch, me from the kitchen fulfilling their coughing request for a grilled cheese sandwich – cut in thirds, please – with chicken noodle soup and crackers or fruit and cubes of cheese, all served on their favorite tray.

This scenario only happened, of course, when they were really sick because all three of my sons tried to worm their way out of going to school at least once a week.

“Mom,” they’d croak from their rooms. “I’m sick.”

“Are you bleeding?”

“No.”

“Are you throwing up?”

“No.”

“Then get dressed,” I’d yell back to them. “You’re going to school.”

I’m sure that sounds mean, but I’d been duped by boys who tried every trick in the book to skip school. Over the years, I learned that my darling angels were sneaky.

My boys knew how to hold the thermometer close to the light bulb or run the thermometer under hot water when I was out of the room.

They knew to only spike the mercury to 100 – just enough to stay home for a day but not high enough to miss any real fun.

The fake act that usually works is the stomach ache. It’s hard to judge for sure if a teenager is lying about a stomach ache. But let’s face it – if they say they’re too sick to eat ice cream or Lucky Charms for breakfast, then they’re really sick.

Having sons who faked being sick is where I first came up with the couch as the best place to recuperate. They thought it so I could pamper them while they were in the throes of acute illness.

The real reason was to keep an eye on them, both to make sure they weren’t faking; and, if they really were sick, to watch over them until they felt better. I also told them they’d get better faster if they rested up on the couch.

So a few days ago, when my head started throbbing, the coughing started and I ached all over, I knew it was time to hibernate in the best spot for recuperating – the couch. And in 24 hours, I was as good as new.

Couch time – the best medicine around.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.