“It’s Monday!” Riley says, with the day still so new that the morning light looks soft and tentative and the chill outside clouds the windows. My favorite backyard tree looks bony and bare, empty-handed and reaching like me, but Riley glows like a sun-drenched bloom, pink-cheeked from sleep, bright with anticipation. I look up at […]

Into the night and our deep sleep comes the blare of an alarm. History repeats.  Emergency emergency wake up wake up, the alarm screams, and cartoon me jumps up and runs immediately into the wall, while the real not-yet-lucid me picks up my phone, swings my legs over the side of the bed, and pulls […]

“I need help, please,” Adam says, thrusting his nightlight toward me. “It’s not working.” It can be a whole new year, the midnight sky exploding in colorful stars, manmade light raining toward the earth with sparkling sound, and we can still be on the ground feeling damaged. He draws one long leg up in a […]

At the end of the day, while the lights still twinkle in the living room, I crawl into bed and sigh. Few moments feel as satisfying as this one. If energy sparkles in jars—we have this treasure in jars of clay, I’m still radiant, even if I feel as though I have turned up empty. […]

Riley can’t respond to me when she’s seizing. She can’t answer my gentle pleas for her to come back, though she tries to turn her head toward me and gets locked there, looking back over her left shoulder, eyes seeing nowhere and then straining beyond even me. I glance at the clock, marking the time, […]

When the time comes to travel home, Riley throws her arms around Opa’s waist, presses her cheek against his chest and sobs.  She comes at him from the side, which turns the whole thing into a wonky lean, especially as she tries to shrink her body down to match her vulnerable feelings. “I think this […]

Mirrors lie, Amor Towles wrote in A Gentleman in Moscow.  I had to grab a pen and write the quote in my journal because it rang true, because I had heard those lies for most of my life.  I remember it now, away from home, as I walk through a glassy, windowed hallway and catch […]

“That’s so sweet,” Riley says, head bent over her phone. At first I forget to respond, or am at least so focused on traffic and stuck in my own muddled mind that I don’t, even though I hear her. So she repeats the comment, glancing up at me, “Aww, that’s so sweet,” her emphasis like […]

In the picture my friend sends me, Adam leaps, his long legs artfully bent, his face passionately focused. I imagine a crescendo, a bold, sweeping musical phrase building in Adam’s heart, exploding through his body. My son is a dancer. I am someone who dances for joy, often in worship, often poorly, laughing because I […]

On Monday morning, I wake up sore. Before I open my eyes, a shadowy thought moves through my mind: I can’t do this. I will not be able to do this. The weekend had been consoling and also desolate. On Saturday, Kevin and I had painted walls (renovation!) until our hands and feet felt swollen […]