When they ask Adam to name his role for the end-of-the-year play at school, he chooses, “Kevin,” says his father’s name in that deep, gravelly voice, just grunts it out like a fact. His teacher smiles telling me this. “I said, ‘Now Adam, you can pick any name you want. Are you sure?’” she says, […]

Zoe turns on the stairs to look back up at me, just a flutter of robe and tassel, a flash of royal blue, that hat crowning her swishing hair, and I think, This is one of those moments I’ll remember. Some moments are like that, so weighted and important and real we can reach out […]

“Mom?” Riley reaches into the cabinet to my right, rising up on her toes behind me, leaning like a shoot. I wash dishes at the sink, my sore hands soothed by the hot water, the soft soap. The bottoms of my feet hurt from standing so long, and at the end of an afternoon spent […]

Early, while the sky’s still grey, Riley comes downstairs, slowly, like always. From my chair in the living room, from the place where I sit still dark and curled, I can hear the fall of her feet. Her knees crack, an inherited weakness, as she plants herself on each step, and for a moment I […]

“So Adam, what did you do at school today?” The question, admittedly, feels familiar and worn, like a knob on an oft-opened and oft-slammed door, one we open today like every other day, honestly anticipating nothing save blank space. And for how long, I wonder, sitting here wearing my end-of-the-day weariness like grave clothes, can […]

I don’t know her name–not the sound of her voice, not even the shape of her smile. As it is these days, because of the mask she wears, her eyes—dark and determined and locked on mine–are all I know of her, those eyes and that hair, curling dark around her head in short, wild corkscrews. […]

“I just hope God let’s me learn how to drive,” Riley ventures. Her voice waivers; the flicker from the TV only half lights her face. I don’t have to see her clearly to know that her ocean blue eyes glisten wet, threatening a storm. “I know,” I say and Kevin nods. Riley has talked about […]

The kitchen smells savory-rich, of comfort and warmth and vacation, of salty, sizzling bacon, slowly melting butter, and just lightly, of syrup. This morning, we cook up breakfast sandwiches assembly-line style, sipping coffee and talking, our voices rising and falling among the clatter of plates and pans. Here and there, a chuckle, a yawn, a […]

That breeze today, it tickles my cheeks, warm Autumn winds dancing over rising hills, an invisible thumb tracing the lines of my face. I press my hand flat against the pages to keep them from drifting up. That hand, it’s my mother’s hand, perpetually tanned, rooted with veins like a stretch of earth beneath a […]

Weary fingers, mine, and tangled in her hair, weaving, weaving, weaving the wet strands in thick ropes down her back. For at least fifteen minutes every day, Riley and I become the reflection of generations of others before us–their angled arms, their busy fingers, their bodies bending, tending. Riley, still and waiting, tilts her face […]