In the hallway at our neurologist’s office, as Riley and I breeze along behind the medical assistant on the way to an exam room, I realize again how much my daughter has grown up. It’s a flaw of ours as parents, that while we encourage and facilitate growth in our children, we lack proficiency in […]

From the sixteenth floor of The Carolinian, Kevin and I watch the sunrise.  We sit on the balcony, sipping steamy coffee, gasping over the vastness of the sea, stunned by the silvery surface of the water reflecting the sky, threaded suddenly with amber and gold. The perspective up here on the balcony reminds us of […]

In the late afternoon, I talk to Zoe on the phone, stretching my legs out in front of me, craning my neck toward the window to savor that beautiful golden hue that becomes the light at near-finish. Zoe and I will meander over miles of thoughts, sharing a pilgrim feast while I hold on my […]

Slowly we begin, feeling rumpled, and, somehow, still buried under covers, even though we, in our performance series shirts, have just stepped off the porch and into the first gentle light of morning. I look down at my running shoes, at the edges dirty with road dust, assessing, as though the shoes will be the […]

At the end of the day, while the lights still twinkle in the living room, I crawl into bed and sigh. Few moments feel as satisfying as this one. If energy sparkles in jars—we have this treasure in jars of clay, I’m still radiant, even if I feel as though I have turned up empty. […]

“It’s so pretty out here,” I say, the words like an exhale. Golden brown leaves skitter across the asphalt, and everywhere I look I see another vibrant shade–the sky, cool blue; the trees, a sunset arch sheltering our pathway. I breathe a prayer, remembering something C.S. Lewis said, something that fits: We do not want […]

My friend gives me the cross as a gift, just lays it in my palm, and it isn’t until that filling, the cool, solid weight of olive wood resting against my skin, that I realize how empty-handed I’ve been. “I found these online,” she says, giving one to another friend too, because together, we make […]

Kevin and I set out for our walk in the early morning, while the air is crisp and new light glows soft pink. We smile over the volume of the birds, how they chitter and squaw from fence post to power lines to the peaks of the trees, sentinels passing messages. We gesture and smile, […]

We should give this hour a name, when the afternoon swells like a bruise and we all feel molasses-slow, our faces stretched into unending yawns, and still, we have work to do. I want to pour myself another cup of coffee, but I think I have consumed more than enough caffeine today, and something feels […]

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 […]