We wind our way along Pier 60 just as the sun dips, melting gold right into the ocean. I stand a moment and just breathe, watching the way the waves rise, wind-shaped right out of the glass sea. The pier is a flurry of activity as the city gears up for a festival on the […]

Finally together at the end of the day, and the murmur of quiet activity is grace.  Riley sits with her feet tucked under her at the bar, giggling over a word that twisted in her mouth when she said it, all those wispy, mussed hairs falling golden around her cheeks.  Zoe saunters in on sock […]

Standing there elegant in front of us all, she says to him, “I choose love.  I choose you. I choose the wonderful things about you and the things that drive me nuts.  I choose the good days and the bad ones,” and her voice doesn’t even quaver. She is radiant with chosenness, and it strikes me that […]

“I didn’t even realize he was wearing his sweatpants,” I say to my friend, gesturing with one finger toward my son, over to the back of the auditorium where Adam now paces, ankles showing blank below lanky black, just above those bruised-up tennis shoes he likes.  I’m not even sure that the elastic on the […]

They are not, of course, in the butterfly garden where they are supposed to be, not in the lane past the pretty picket fence and that rough, weathered gate that threatens splinters.  I sit down on a bench in front of a high, knotted hedge thick with vines, allowing my eyes to wander over wild, delicate […]

Evening at the beach, and I’m swaying in the porch swing, pushing my toes against the deck planks.  It’s too dark to see the ocean from where I sit, but I can just make out the faint, ever-changing lines of white caps, like fine, thin sketch marks adding dimension to shades of black and blue-gray. […]

From the worn table–an oval thing, brown like the hull of a nut and rubbed with a history of fingers, a delicate kaleidoscope of tiny butterflies drifts, falling lightly on our living room carpet. I scoop up the thin, papery things with one hand as I walk by, kneeling just the moment, and carefully dump […]

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 […]

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 […]

The hour turns, and my friend waves me over, patting the chair beside. All evening, we have all only wanted to surround her, this iron-strong friend strong enough yet to admit that she needs us to lift her.  It takes a brave woman to allow the veil to fall—whisper-light—from her face, to sit uncovered and honest, to […]