11Apr 20, 2018
Mid-morning and they wander out to me, rested and fresh from sleep, blanket lines on their high-boned cheeks. Riley’s brassy hair swings out from her shoulders, lifted by the breeze, as she settles into the chair across from me, carrying her breakfast. “Happy birthday, Mom Jones,” she says, while Zoe gently drops a present on […]
12Mar 9, 2018
Riley walks in the door in the afternoon, backpack slung over one shoulder, conversation and friendship glowing warm on her cheeks. It’s as though laughter rests on the tip of her tongue. “How was school?” I say, rising from the worn table where Zoe and I have been sipping coffee, where our meandering words have […]
13Dec 9, 2016
In like a breeze after school they come, swift and rattling the edges of things, scattering papers and shoes and the crumpled wrappers from their lunches. Riley’s cheeks bloom pink with the exhilaration of arrival, as though they’ve been far away and flying and have only just landed home, in from some place now only […]
14May 20, 2016
Waiting at the stoplight on the way to school, drizzle dotting the windshield, and I grab my phone to take a picture of my daughter. The cloud-cast makes her skin look more alabaster than olive-gold; makes her blue-gray eyes look stormy. “What’re you doing?” She asks. But I catch the hint of a smile, just […]
15Jul 10, 2015
So, I’ve been hurting over something we do to each other. I say we because I’m guilty too, we because we’re in this together, we because it takes all of us to change our culture. In my life, the repetitive strategy of the enemy often looks like this, just with different supporting details: Flashback nearly twelve years, […]
16Nov 14, 2014
It is the way she says it—all laced with delicious joy—that makes me stop. She sounds the way I might were I to say I get to sleep in or I.can’t.believe I get to lay on the beach and just read—like she’s just realized a thrill, an unexpected and rare gift, and she savors the sweet taste. […]
17Oct 10, 2014
Sometimes wishing for something else, something better, something other, nearly spoils the planting. In our hands, we carry seed to sow, seed gritty in our fingers and sweaty in the palm. But standing in the middle of I don’t want to, we scarely imagine the blooms that will come once we reluctantly leave those hard, dead […]
18Sep 5, 2014
She could not have known about the day, its prickly criticism and thick heat, its challenge and pursed lips and ungracious attitude. She could not have absorbed its unkind words. She could not have known how it all felt gray, in spite of the sun, or how many times I wondered why am I doing this […]
19Nov 15, 2013
We spend an afternoon at the table passing sheets of sticky letters, photographs, pens. Before I turn my attention to helping Riley through homework, before cooking, before folding the towels, Zoe and I sit together tasting gratitude like honey on our tongues. I press down a bit of light-catching foam and wonder why it feels […]
20Aug 2, 2013
I admit it: Sometimes my attitude stinks. I wake up heart sick—breathing sighs, swallowing complaint, coughing up rot. It spreads quickly, my gray brooding. Suddenly I look around, and my husband and children carry my heavy. My ungratefulness wraps their shoulders, black and thick-chained. And together we ache, weary of this place, and our blinded […]