She comes to find me on the porch, settling lightly on the double rocker next to me, shimmying her body close to mine.  The warm wind picks up a stray piece of her hair and plasters it across her forehead.  She leans against the pillows, considering me briefly, reaching up to tuck that wild strand […]

“When I struggled so much with anxiety, God taught me to pray,” Riley says, lifting her hand and turning it over, as though neatly wrapping the words, a gift.  And then, when later we reach for each other’s hands, she quietly asks God to help her brother talk to us.  Maybe she’s just following Zoe’s lead. […]

Adam finds me sometimes, just to talk about the things that excite him. I’m one of the few with whom he’ll take that still awkward step, because he can appreciate the way that I know him, the way womb-forged bonds overcome every other kind of separation.  I almost always know what Adam means to say before he says […]

“Hey now, offer him grace, okay?” She sits in front of me, tears pooling in the pit of the day, and I wash onions off of my hands with soap meant to smell like a sunrise sail.  It won’t be enough.  I know that, but I try anyway.  Hours from now, my fingers will still smell […]

“One. Two. Three. Four,” She says, shuffling the cards in chunky sections that fall too quickly away from her fingers.  The cards thunk and smack against the table.  Riley has developed a ritual even for preparing the game.  She shuffles the cards six times before she deals, grinning at us as we amble to our chairs, dragging […]

There’s only ever been one perfect love; only one that didn’t come out all lopsided, with smudges all over the edges. Time races up behind me and I have no choice but to microwave the butter I forgot to take out ahead.  I need it to cream, and ice-cold butter doesn’t cream.  I unfold the […]

Mom, what will you write about today?    Her question is a gift; a jewel in my palm. She sits at the bar looking very nearly sixteen–golden head bent over her phone and all those little flyaways catching the early light; a cup of coffee just south of her hand, steaming; a dozen bracelets sliding […]

Merry Christmas from our family to you and yours! Each time you read these posts, you give me a gift of grace, and for that I am so grateful.  I always pray that you’ll be blessed by something you find here.  As a family, we pray that today you–whoever and wherever you are–feel blessed and […]

She apologizes to Kevin like we autism mamas do, ignoring the sharp, slicing pain it brings just to say the words. I’m sorry, my daughter–she has autism.  She doesn’t mean nothing by it.   She says this gesturing over something Kevin barely noticed, a failure to say hello, a back turned, a little stumble over […]

In the crisp of morning, we wait for school, snatching glimpses toward the door.  Adam reaches for me, flicking my ear with his fingers, saying I love you in a way all his own.  He tilts his head away, his expression lost, crinkled and preoccupied.  I wonder if he contemplates the angle of the new light beaming […]