341
May 19, 2017
For them, this was a game. For me, this was a lesson in trust. “So, see, what you want to do is collect four queens from the middle,” Zoe says, gesturing expansively toward the center of the table. “If you get the Rose Queen, that’s very good, because you can immediately draw an additional queen.” Adam […]
342
May 5, 2017
“What’s wrong?” I stand at the bottom of the stairs with one foot propped on the nearest step waiting for her answer, counting the bits of things–bright sock fuzz, some kind of crumb–caught in the nap of that foot-worn carpet. One more beat of silence and I’ll run up, one answer and I’ll bend down […]
343
Apr 21, 2017
I put a damp cloth in Adam’s hands and point toward the bathtub. “Go ahead, wipe it clean, now.” “We don’t have to clean the bathroom,” he says to me, because he doesn’t like scrubbing bathtubs any more than most of the rest of us. And that’s his new thing, as if life spins on […]
344
Apr 14, 2017
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 […]
345
Apr 7, 2017
We run in that space just before the sunlight bursts new born, obliterating darkness; in that space where apart from the faithfulness of day, we’d not expect the arrival of Light at all. This is the parenthesis between rain showers, the tar-dark, murky stillness before another downpour, somehow carved for us like a silent pause. […]
346
Mar 31, 2017
I can hear him beside me and his voice is reverently light, soft and piercing. But the thing is: Adam never just sings. He worships. We sit beneath the trees when the sun is soft and dying. A breeze blows through–a Spirit-wind, and I hear him quietly crooning, oh the grace reaching out for me. We’re […]
347
Feb 3, 2017
She says it like it’s a thing you have to say to feel good about the day: Alright then, so I am pre-pared to be amazed. Her voice falls heavily on the two most important words in the sentence, prepared and amazed, and of course, she draws my attention. I roll back from my desk and turn, […]
348
Jan 20, 2017
“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 […]
349
Dec 23, 2016
I don’t know how we accomplish anything without each other. The day drifts away and we fall into order at the table, stamps and labels and letters in thick stacks in front of us, ropey veins like roots—more pronounced by the passing of years—rising from the backs of our moving hands. You’d know we belonged […]
350
Dec 9, 2016
In like a breeze after school they come, swift and rattling the edges of things, scattering papers and shoes and the crumpled wrappers from their lunches. Riley’s cheeks bloom pink with the exhilaration of arrival, as though they’ve been far away and flying and have only just landed home, in from some place now only […]