It’s one of those days with locked-up steel skies and a chill seeping into my skin; one of those days when time bruises our backs and driving to school feels like slowly untangling knots; one of those days when I wonder what caused all this mess but have no real hope for a sensible answer.  It’s one […]

In the morning, he puts a cup in my hands, french-pressed and steaming, the flavor deep, and I sip, letting the new day develop.  My chilled fingers begin to warm to the living ahead of me, living that surely overflows the banks and spills, splashing.  I crack the blinds and watch light overtake darkness, slowly, […]

“What’s this?” she says, leaning into the doorway, that smile wide.  She wears blue eyeshadow, like tiny snatches of bright sky calling her eyes up. I explain that Riley and I are the proprietresses of the stocking stuffer room.  “Mmmhmm,” Riley chirps agreeably and the ball on her Santa hat bobs, while I guesture toward […]

“I can’t–” “Here, I’ll help you,” she says, my Riley, who once said nothing. The kids at our table–this table, finished with glitter and glue and flecks of marker and fingernail polish, finished with a whole history of growing and laughing and living—these kids flat press their little hands on construction paper, tracing, jagged-cutting the […]

He presses the cross into my hands, a rugged, delicate thing he pulls from his pocket I don’t know how; it seems bigger than pocket-sized.  I run my thumb over the intricate carving on the stem and then let it rest on one palm so I can dip my fingertips into the tiny ravines.  I […]

The journal was a gift from my parents; the cover black, like pitch, like a blind dark day.  Butterflies explode from the corner, brilliant blue, buttery gold, every size, hundreds of them by surprise, overwhelming all that flat emptiness.  I run my fingers over the raised edges of their wings, feeling the fine lines, the […]

I step down the ladder and balance my paintbrush on the edge of the can, reaching down to trace the paint-tattoo on my knee with one finger.  This now dry glob—when did that happen?–looks like a Maui Mist cloud, all wispy at the edges.  I clench and unclench my hands, sore, noticing the red welts rising like blistering […]

I have moments I collect like treasure–the moments I never thought I’d see, and this is one of them: I rush in late in the middle of a song and slide into a seat next to Kevin, picking up the melody, letting the words gather in my mind. What heights of love, what depths of […]

He places the card in my hand, lightly fingering the rough fold, the paper blue like a storm in the middle of the afternoon or the ocean in places very deep.  I look at the flat, incongruent edges and see fibers; wet, bruised pulp; dye on someone’s fingers.  It’s remarkable to see the beginnings of […]

I find her note on my desk.  It’s just a yellow sticky note written in ballpoint, but the print is her own.  I can almost see her hand gripping the pen. That’s it, a small, blinding-bright effort to encourage, inspired by some of Ann Voskamp’s ideas for living given I’ve slapped up on our refrigerator door […]