61Oct 17, 2014
I don’t know how much time I have left. Â Afternoon, and autumn leaves wander and twist to the earth, fluttering through the grass and along the sidewalk. Â The sun makes a blaze of the trees. Â I stop for a moment just to see, putting down my work, stunned by the fragility of life. Â I […]
62Oct 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 […]
63Oct 3, 2014
This week, a departure for Kevin and me, a Sabbath rest: Tucked away, pulled back from the busy road and held–but lightly–by the trees, we hide beneath the fog. Â Sound is magnified here, somehow, or perhaps it is that other noise removed leaves room for hearing birdsong, the cheeky chatter of squirrels, the deep-throated gurgle […]
64Sep 26, 2014
Deep, empty night, and we brush our teeth, looking across at each other with eyes like moons. Â We both feel hollow-carved, like vulnerable husks reaching hungrily for rest. Â I have no thought except for the feel of the sheets beneath my legs. And then, a crash. Kevin and I look at each other briefly, asking […]
65Sep 19, 2014
From a grassy field roadside, I gather up the picture of a broken barn with history clear tumbling from it’s splintered walls, the jagged boards dark, like the trunks of trees. Â These planks, hewn from deadwood dragged, shaped over sawdust piles, sanded, treated, painted; nailed sharp, clean, with a satisfied whack—these planks caught the sweat […]
66Sep 12, 2014
Sometimes life strips us clean of words, and we sit together, quiet. Â And maybe it’s that way so we’ll stop to listen. We walk through the rain and into the funeral chapel, gathering damp hugs on our way through the door. Â We sit first, and then we stand, winding in long lines past photographs and […]
67Sep 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 […]
68Aug 29, 2014
In the car at night and I can’t see her face, just the blur of headlights and the jostle of cars weaving in and out of lanes, just the green-lit signs labeling exits. Â From behind me, she speaks, and the tentative way she shapes her words tells me that she chooses this time for the […]
69Aug 22, 2014
Adam stands beside me and his voice climbs, higher and higher toward the sky, pushing, pressing, growing. Sing like never before, oh my soul. Like everyone else, Adam has different voices for different kinds of experience. Â This voice with which he sings is his voice for joy, for love, for comfort. Â It’s the same voice […]
70Aug 15, 2014
In the middle of the week, the Board of Directors at Adam’s new school sends out this beautiful message, and I cry, just letting it settle: We want to express our deepest, most heartfelt gratitude to our families. Just when the weight we were carrying on our shoulders became too much to bear, dozens of […]