He’s in a thousand tiny things:  the way one strand of Riley’s hair falls unevenly across her forehead, the rich sound of Zoe’s laughter—and mine—over song lyrics she misinterprets, the faintest hint of flowers on the breeze when I open the back door and walk across the porch.  The bird feeders, empty, swing ever so […]

https://instagram.com/p/1yb3PWtTXa/ At every event, Adam stands too close.  I have to keep drawing him back to me.  Sometimes I hook an arm around his waist, sometimes I just catch his eyes with mine and say, come here.  But he bounces forward, right up to that white-chalk line on the grass, and it’s not his turn […]

I like the way God built me.   She says it like it’s the simplest thing.  The words fall easy, fluttering elegant, lighting on a twisty varicose vein that branches pen-thin across my thigh.  I had been tracing the bruised lines with my finger.  These spidery betrayers invade, cracks in the shell of me suddenly […]

We wander down the grocery aisle, me with my head buried in a list, Zoe pushing the cart, Riley walking just behind, quietly trying to breathe. Zoe reaches toward me with her eyes.  I feel the gaze grab hard, and I look up and toward my daughter.  Zoe sucks in her belly and stiffens her […]

On the porch in the early morning and the light all new, I lift my hand in the air, bending my fingers into the sign for love.  And Adam, looking through the window as he leaves for school, tilts his head, studying the gesture.  He looks at his own hand as Kevin backs out in […]

Walking behind him, I can see clearly that his jeans only just reach his ankles.  The nurse talks over her shoulder—okay, follow me and then some small talk about the weather, the red file folder jutting out, an extension of her hand that messes up all the angles.  She fills the space with words so light […]

For a moment, just breathe. Morning run under bluest skies, and the warmth of the sun splits apart the crisp, cool evidence of a night safely passed.  The trees, red and swollen, change the tone of the landscape, pregnant now with possibility.  Spring comes suddenly, like a first breath, a startled gasp exhaled as relief; […]

This morning, I finally open the box.  The lid slides free with a sigh, the satisfying thwump of gift opened, gift held, gift counted. Riley gave me a white hyacinth bulb for Christmas, seed of promise in a rooting vase the color of water.  I hold the bulb in my palm, cupping my hand around its teardrop shape, […]

Zoe grabs my hand before I turn. “Wait.” We stand on the threshold looking out at the world.  Clouds wrap thick, dove-gray over the warmth of the sky, until all sight takes on a stormy cast.  Winter lingers, and I want to reach out and touch the knobby buds on the branches of the tree in […]

Snow falls, and the gathering white arrests our attention.  Somewhere between bacon sizzling and deftly wacking the eggs against the clear bowl with the tiny chip just there, my phone rings.  An automated message from the school system.  The voice comes through just a little too loud, and I lift my coffee cup (poured steamy the second […]