The day has gone long and, hungrily, we reach for plates; we stir seasoning into steaming bowls.  Kevin glances at Adam, who stands at the desk, absorbed in a video game, something about a leprechaun in search of a pot of gold. Quietly, the Father says to the son, “Hey, can you set the table?” […]

“How was your day?” I ask Riley as she slides into the car after work, and what I really mean is how were the last few hours, and what astounds me when I ask is that, as usual, she seems as peaceful as the ocean at low tide, still, like glass. “Work was amazing,” she […]

The moment Adam and his friends take the stage, their faces lighten with sudden recognition, as though with the stage lights beaming and the violins singing and the performance blooming, they have all at the same moment just realized they can dance.   Their mouths relax into broad grins, and gradually their lips slide apart, and […]

This four-lane road, the last main thoroughfare before Adam and I get to school, snakes about in hills and curves sometimes tightly compressed and sometimes stretched and rising.  It’s a good analogy for life, this drive, for the way we all get pushed and pressed, the way a day can feel like a long, blind […]

Josh and Riley bend over the island in the kitchen, a wedding planner splayed open in front of them.  Riley’s hand bobs over the cover page, where she carefully writes their names, not formally, the way I would have, just Riley and Josh. In truth, almost everything about this is different for them than it […]

I wait through traffic with a prayer on my heart.  Adam sits beside me, bobbing his head in time to the music—what a beautiful Name it is, having dispensed with my pick-up pleasantries about his day with a perfunctory, “Good,” as in, it was good and that’s all there is to say about it.  As […]

Beside me, my phone vibrates like a bee trapped in a jar, zooming frantically from side to side, beating its wings against the glass.  I lift it and flip it over so that the screen blinks on and I can see that the vibrating heyheyheyhey is not the emergency I had imagined it could be […]

In our living room, Josh and Riley stand side-by-side, she, with her hair yanked up in a high ponytail, yanked, like she suddenly does when her mind can’t be distracted by something like errant strands of hair tickling her cheeks, and he, with his face completely open, ready and waiting for whatever I introduce.  They […]

“Mom Jones, how’s your voice today?” Riley asks, pajama-clad and still rumpled with sleep, leaning against the doorjamb in my office, one hand solidly planted on a curvy hip.  She straightens, gathering her hair into a ponytail with her other hand, flipping it absently as she watches my face. “It’s still gone,” I croak, only […]

“Mom Jones?”  Riley’s voice stops me mid-confession. Jones, what Riley calls “our funny last name,” is a silly joke from years ago that eventually became a sign of Riley’s affection. I look at her, startled out of a full-on run to Jesus.  In the space of the last hour, pride and comparison, mistaken identity and […]