The moment Adam and his friends take the stage, their faces lighten with sudden recognition, as though with the stage lights beaming and the violins singing and the performance blooming, they have all at the same moment just realized they can dance.   Their mouths relax into broad grins, and gradually their lips slide apart, and […]

This four-lane road, the last main thoroughfare before Adam and I get to school, snakes about in hills and curves sometimes tightly compressed and sometimes stretched and rising.  It’s a good analogy for life, this drive, for the way we all get pushed and pressed, the way a day can feel like a long, blind […]

I wait through traffic with a prayer on my heart.  Adam sits beside me, bobbing his head in time to the music—what a beautiful Name it is, having dispensed with my pick-up pleasantries about his day with a perfunctory, “Good,” as in, it was good and that’s all there is to say about it.  As […]

In our living room, Josh and Riley stand side-by-side, she, with her hair yanked up in a high ponytail, yanked, like she suddenly does when her mind can’t be distracted by something like errant strands of hair tickling her cheeks, and he, with his face completely open, ready and waiting for whatever I introduce.  They […]

I laugh in disbelief.  It is the initial sputtering sound of my mind and heart agreeing, I believe, help me in my unbelief, which is what I feel right now, even if my lips have yet to utter the prayer, as I laugh out loud over the mess of how-in-the-world splayed out in front of […]

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 […]

I run my finger over the scars on the dresser in my bedroom, Grandma, twice etched, raw, like an incision in the wood in Riley’s handwriting.  Always in twos. I murmur the dark echo of an old cliché, the shadow of an old joke still half bitter to me, but only by half, because God […]

Home from carpool, I pull the wet, clean clothes from our washer and toss them, with a shake, into the dryer.  I can hear Riley in the kitchen, her voice bright and morning-new, counting to Christmas.  “Just 18 more,” she says, with enthusiasm, but I push the button on the machine and lose the rest […]

We gather as family around the table to celebrate Josh’s birthday—Camille and Ray and Kevin and me with our kids, all following the hostess in the Japanese restaurant like ducks in a line, and I count the blessing.  In my heart, every meal is a eucharist. And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it […]

Riley walks in carrying a package, her arms wrapped wide around a big plastic mailer, and I suddenly remember to receive God’s gifts and give thanks. “There is a package for Mom,” she says, her chin bobbing against the load,” and I’m guessing it has something to do with Christmas.” She’s right, of course. To […]