11Jul 13, 2018
In the beginning, nothing. I stand at the edge of a wide, blank canvas. From the street, as the first light cracks open the sky, I only see a broad, smooth, sandy plain, and beyond this, a dazzling sheet of silver glass. For a number of days, I disconnect everything and step away, wiping it […]
12Aug 4, 2017
Home and kids settled, I run upstairs and slip on my walking shoes, tugging at the laces. Sometimes the only thing I know is that I need God. I slip my keys and my phone in my pocket and promise to be back soon, and I move, carrying water, heavy in one hand. I’m thirsty, […]
13Jul 21, 2017
Even as we leave the house the rain falls silently, light and soft, dotting our arms. We stare at the sky, the wild chaos of cloud, the battle between light and dark. After a cleansing, everything looks raw and startling, new. The shore looks flat, smoothed and then embroidered with gemstones, bordered with old lace. […]
14Jul 14, 2017
We are growing stronger here, together. I say this to her as we walk along the beach, leaving impressions of our feet in the sand. With every purposeful step, the soft shore sinks. The salty sea rolls over our footprints, filling the heels, the toes, making briny tidepools and minuscule islands—our own desolate Lilliput, soon […]
15Jul 7, 2017
I step down the ladder and balance my paintbrush on the edge of the can, reaching down to trace the paint-tattoo on my knee with one finger. This now dry glob—when did that happen?–looks like a Maui Mist cloud, all wispy at the edges. I clench and unclench my hands, sore, noticing the red welts rising like blistering […]
16Jul 24, 2015
In the morning, the rain comes, and I do what I have determined to do more and more these days: I stop to see, to gather up the feeling of the breeze lifting my hair away from my cheeks. I spy a plump cardinal hiding just inside the gardenias bobbing gently by the steps, an elegant […]
17Jul 3, 2015
I confess that when she comes to get me, I do not want to get up. I just picked up my book—Dorothea Frank’s Plantation, and I have precious few moments to mind-leap on down to the Lowcountry and shut out the world. Every time this author punctuates a sentence with the word yanh, I smell the […]
18Aug 8, 2014
Beside the pool in the late morning, he suddenly kneels, leaning out over the water. Majestic clouds move across an unfathomable sky, changing the clear light as it travels down and washes over his bent body, the rustling trees, the white plastic chairs in orderly, framing lines. From my chair, I pause, gathering him […]
19Jul 18, 2014
Afternoon, and the beach becomes another elegant art, a mosaic of striking contrasts. I love the seascape for the way she changes, for the intensity of her perspectives. Across the water I see rain, a blue black bruise on the horizon blurring the line God made between the deep sea and the boundless sky. I […]
20Jun 13, 2014
In the middle of the afternoon, when the sun burns so hot we can almost see the scorching heat and the grass curls brown and crackles beneath our bare feet, we eat peaches that taste of sunshine. The sticky juice runs down our chins. We spoon up blueberries dripping with sweet milk and push out […]