1Mar 15, 2024
For the better part of an hour, I listen to our engaged couple getting ready to go for a walk. They arrive at the moment together after lunch, having noted and discussed at length that, in the plan I had helped them create for the afternoon, a walk comes next. I hear them still processing […]
2Dec 1, 2023
Our new ophthalmologist wears red socks, that’s the first thing I notice as he leans into an apparatus that makes him look like a mechanical bug, or maybe an owl, with eyes made of magnifying glass and metallic feathers outlining the sockets, with grommets like tiny decoys scattered about his face. It can feel like […]
3Aug 25, 2023
On the Fridays when Josh spends the day with us, Riley, Josh, and I have conversations about what they’ll do for each other in-case-of-seizure. They sit at the bar, our couple, their fingers interlaced, while I stand in front of them at the kitchen sink, my hands preoccupied with washing. “Now Josh,” I begin. He […]
4Mar 10, 2023
In the new, pink light, Kevin and I set out on a run, past trees covered in bridal blossoms like lace trailing down, limbs cupping silken petals in shades of plum, and bushes tossing lemon-yellow blooms on the ground in front of them. It’s early yet, and Spring has sprung. I can tuck my head […]
5Feb 17, 2023
In the morning, Adam and I rush out the door on the way to school and I smile at him with his long, twenty-year-old bones and the bud of wisdom in his tender eyes and the snarl of hair at the back of his head where he never brushes, and I think of the strangeness […]
6Jan 6, 2023
Josh hands Riley a gift bag, jolly red and green, plump with surprises and spilling over with tissue, and we all sit forward, anticipating grace. All through Advent, I have been thinking: On the surface of things, at least according to the understanding of their time, Mary and Joseph should never have married. I’ve been […]
7Jul 22, 2022
tap, tap, tap taptaptaptap, tap I hear it, a sound like progress, the sound of getting-it-done. I follow the sound into the kitchen, driven to the table where Adam works his way through his daily list, the list I made to keep him found and present, to keep him using his mind. Adam leans over […]
8Jun 24, 2022
“Hey Mom? What are you doing?” Riley asks, bending over my shoulder with her eyes on my computer, thick, brassy hanks of her hair falling away from captivity behind her ears. She straightens a little, tucks those errant strands back away from her cheeks, never taking her eyes off my screen. Of course, she can […]
9May 21, 2021
I joke and call myself a hoop jumper, me with my hair flying wild around my face and my exercise clothes still on from before carpool; me with a pen in one hand, and a mess of papers stretched across the desk in indistinguishable stacks, some paper-clipped, some loose and, as Kevin would say, “flapping […]
10Jan 29, 2021
“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 […]