I glance at Zoe and sigh, looking through the garage to the open door, past the concrete gray and the exposed beams, the chrome of bikes against the walls, the chain and track of the automatic door, to the warm light coming from the living room windows. The garage, with it’s steel shade, looks like […]

I scan the bustling auditorium for Riley and Adam and immediately find them, my two opposite kids, naturally sitting on opposite sides of the room. Adam looks back at me from a lonely spot on the second row and grins, his gaze both an acknowledgment and an assessment. He’s good, but do I need anything? […]

When they ask Adam to name his role for the end-of-the-year play at school, he chooses, “Kevin,” says his father’s name in that deep, gravelly voice, just grunts it out like a fact. His teacher smiles telling me this. “I said, ‘Now Adam, you can pick any name you want. Are you sure?’” she says, […]

Zoe turns on the stairs to look back up at me, just a flutter of robe and tassel, a flash of royal blue, that hat crowning her swishing hair, and I think, This is one of those moments I’ll remember. Some moments are like that, so weighted and important and real we can reach out […]

“Mom?” Riley reaches into the cabinet to my right, rising up on her toes behind me, leaning like a shoot. I wash dishes at the sink, my sore hands soothed by the hot water, the soft soap. The bottoms of my feet hurt from standing so long, and at the end of an afternoon spent […]

How easy it is to sink to that place where the smallest things we do for love don’t feel like love at all, to that shadowland where we believe wholeheartedly in withholding, where we forget that giving is the means to abundance. Adam sulks over his dinner, flicking his eyes toward me, his look pit-dark. […]

Fresh from the shower on an 80-degree day that feels thick with the promise of Summer, Adam spins–literally–into the kitchen wearing flannel pajama pants–buffalo check–and a salt-washed long-sleeved t-shirt as blue as his eyes. I wonder how he doesn’t instantly feel that sticky prickle of after-shower sweat at the base of the neck and the […]

Riley sits at the bar, fresh-faced and bright, if still a little rumpled with sleep. She looks like Spring, like the first day of sapphire skies; like new flowers with blushing, velvet leaves; like anticipation; like hope sitting right there on a bench in my kitchen., and it’s striking to me because it’s the opposite […]

As soon as Kevin leaves the room, Riley slips through the open door and flops on the sofa beside me, hairbrush in one hand, all that hair still dark wet and snarled, swinging against her back and scattering droplets. Immediately I notice her red-rimmed eyes, but choose not to say anything at first, carefully sliding […]

“I just hope God let’s me learn how to drive,” Riley ventures. Her voice waivers; the flicker from the TV only half lights her face. I don’t have to see her clearly to know that her ocean blue eyes glisten wet, threatening a storm. “I know,” I say and Kevin nods. Riley has talked about […]