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 […]
2Jan 19, 2024
I watch Riley’s face as she describes her first in-person day in vocational school, how animated she has become, how her eyes shine and her smile deepens, her voice lilting while she recounts all the details to a close friend of mine who, having come over with a tray of baton cookies in her hands […]
3Jul 7, 2023
At the water park, we wait in a sunny line on a meandering sidewalk bordered by honeysuckle just past the bloom, holding our rafts, rafts that will soon take us down a waterslide. As a group, we exude anticipation, a chattering hope spurred on by the whooping sounds of delight we’ve heard all along our […]
4Aug 26, 2022
As we step onto the path, past the gravel and asphalt and through an arbor of trees to the place where the air grows light and cool, I realize two things: I am not wearing the right shoes for this hike, and consequently, I need a walking stick. Roots ripple across the path, rising up […]
5Apr 17, 2020
Sometimes all I can see is what hurts, what’s hard, what I wish could be different. Before we even leave our driveway, Riley stops, setting her water bottle down, handing me the paper, her pen. She lifts her sunglasses, peers more closely at her phone. “It says license plate, so…” She talks to herself more […]
6Dec 27, 2019
“You know those days when you wake up and you think, ‘I want to help someone today’? My friend says this casually, leaning into the phone like we’re sitting across the table. She continues, as if our hearts beat the same. “Well, yesterday I woke up like that, so I got up, got dressed, got […]
7Sep 20, 2019
We sneak out on the porch like wild children, flicking lights off as we go, laughter rushing over our tongues like the crisp night air. We open our fists, letting down the day, making room to feel in our palms what can never be traced with our fingers. I blink up at the inky black […]
8Oct 26, 2018
In the last gasp of day, Kevin and I wind our way along unknown streets, all squeaky springs and clacking chains. These bicycles are the picture-postcard kind, sherbet-colored, lemon and mint, with earthy baskets bobbing at the front. I imagine mine brimming with trailing flowers like they do in greeting card photographs, except that would […]
9Jun 1, 2018
Early morning and the way feels long, as though I’ve meandered for miles without a full inhale, and my finger pauses over this verse: “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter (Exodus 13:17).” I imagine the way those freed women felt, wrapping […]
10Oct 27, 2017
On the field, a tangle of feet, tennis shoes slick with wet, flat grass, green-smeared on Converse white. Some of the kids sprint, others twist and skitter, like wind-blown seeds. It’s a game, a favorite: the prey try to make it across the field to grab up a bit of foam “food” in their fists, one […]