Jamie Janosz

Moving from the Midwest to Florida, I had certain expectations. Some good. Others bad. I looked forward to throwing away my down coat and my plastic ice scraper. I worried about humidity and hurricanes. Well, I've been here for six months now - January through July - and I have a much better idea of what there is to love (and maybe not love as much) about my new home. What you give up... 1) Grass Lawns . The grass in our Florida front yard is crab grass. They have all sorts of fancy names for it here, but it is definitely the stuff we tried hard to kill in the Midwest. This is weedy, finnicky grass. The ground is sandy. Even after what seemed like a drenching downpour, the sand appears untouched and parched. Yes, we do have green lawns - but if you look closely you can see the difference. 2) Seasons . Perhaps my biggest shock was to give up any semblance of seasons. I remember stopping at a restaurant in December and hearing a Christmas carol. Why are they playing Chr...

On one of my last visits to my grandparent’s home in Green Bay, Wisconsin, they decided to lead my husband, daughter, and I out of town, so we followed their rambling Buick toward the expressway on-ramp.  When we stopped to buy gas, my grandma – “Honey” as I always called her – pressed a 3 X 5 inch piece of paper into my hand. On it, in her large looped cursive writing, was the recipe for her Swedish pancakes. The thin, crepe-like pancakes were my favorite, and I had helped her make them many times. If I close my eyes right now, I can remember how she’d lift my hand to show how the batter should be just right, coating the spoon. The oil, she’d explain, should be spitting a bit. Then the batter was poured and the pan tilted – this way and that – to make a thin pancake with sprawling crisped edges. Honey’s Swedish Pancakes. That day, I tucked the paper safely into my purse, and later set it on the kitchen shelf right underneath my spices. That recipe is my le...

My husband looks at the number of "friends" listed on my Facebook page and laughs. "Those aren't all your friends," he quips. "How come I've never met most of them?" And, he's right. He hasn't. I have 955 friends on my Facebook feed, many who I have not seen face-to-face in years, even decades. Some were friends who I grew up with in the little south suburban, quarry town of Thornton, Illinois, where I was born. We were classmates together at Parkside Elementary and Wolcott Junior High. I rode my bike to school with Amy and went to birthday parties with Jill. Still others are friends who I sat in Sunday School next to and ran the Awana circle with back at First Baptist Church in South Holland. We played four square in the church basement and had lock-in nights playing capture the flag in the church lot. We sat in the back row, left side of the church sanctuary, and went out after the service for pizza. I have friends who went to...

Southern charm. I had heard about it, but I have never quite experienced it until I walked the gorgeous cobblestone streets of Savannah, Georgia. Recently, I took an entire week of vacation time and traveled a short 3 1/2 hour trip to Savannah. What a gorgeous, historical, romantic city! Milt, Sabrina and I met up with our good friends, the Obermaiers and visited SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) a school that both our daughter and their daughter are considering. In Savannah, we stayed at the B-Historic - a quaint hotel located right downtown. How great to be able to park our car for the entire visit and explore the city on foot. The first thing you'll notice about Savannah are the historic town squares. There is not just one beautiful square/park - as you find in many small Southern towns -  but dozens of them, arranged like a grid throughout the historic section of the city. Central to each one is a monument honoring a person of significance. Juliette...

In college, my friend Amy and I were shameless Flannery O'Connor groupies.  We were fellow writers and students at a midwest Bible college. In our Creative Writing course, the professor introduced us to many authors we had never read - but Flannery quickly became our favorite. Her characters were unexpected: disturbing, grotesque, and larger-than-life. Yet they were also ordinary - the type of people you might encounter at your local WalMart. They were overweight, loud-mouthed, some suffered deformities, others were drifters. They spoke crassly, and then (often in the same breath) they would speak about God. As she said so well, "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." We had never read faith stories like these. Flannery O'Connor's stories were not the sanctified, made-for-tv Christian-novels we had grown up on by authors like Grace Livingston Hill or Janette Oke. These were rough and tumble, edgy, almost obscene. Ye...