In our many hours of learning, we learn how to pray. I pass out empty index cards because my children, who find it hard to function without discernment of the edges, need discrete lines, spaces they can see in which to realize and organize real hopes into real petitions. The moments to consider, to plan, […]

I kneel next to Adam’s feet, a piece of string stretched along the floor, Sharpie poised. “Don’t move,” I tell him, which comes close to telling Adam not to breathe. He stands in place, but shifts a thin, wide hand to one hip. His toes drift up from the floor and I press them back […]

After dinner, we settle our forks on plates smeared delicious, and I give thanks. Around one sentence gather so many gifts: dinner, delicious, we. Adam stands, reaches for Kevin’s plate, then mine, stacking them with careful clatter beneath his own. His eyes flick past Riley, who still needs to finish a few bites, to Zoe, […]

After dinner, gathered around the blessing-table, our emptied, sopped-up plates abandoned like islands, our bodies weary from the day, we feast on family. “We should play a game,” Kevin says, and I get up to look in the cabinet where we keep them. Adam follows, towering behind me, swaying like a pendulum. For Adam, stillness […]

In the window, the orchid’s petals drop, crisp and thin, like elegant parchment cut-outs piling in drifts on the sill. Their rose hue has faded to ivory; they age like paper, but far more quickly. I cup my hand, sweeping in the soft, dead things, murmuring about the loss of another fragile life. “I wonder […]

Dumbbells gripped in hand, lifted over me like the weight that knots my neck, I remember thinking only of what will be next, after this. I used to plot it out by the hour, how I’d manage to do my way through the morning and into the afternoon. And then, and then, and then. How […]

I slide my thumbs over the curves of an apple, holding it under the tap. Water splashes over Granny Smith green, green like early leaves with sun shining through. Before slicing in, before bruising the fruity flesh, I wash. The water chills my thumbs, my palms. Zoe leans on the bar, suddenly open, telling me […]

“What else I can do to help?” Riley asks again for maybe the sixth time, hands on her hips, that grin stretching wide. Riley loves to help. She asks this of my so-beautiful friend, who stands hot-cheeked and fingering a hasty ponytail, assessing an assortment of baskets heaped with supplies, a row of folding tables […]

Rain dots the windshield. Soft new light scatters over the sticky pollen haze, glistening through the baptismal weather. We pull into the parking lot at school, where kids and teachers already work in community, industriously rolling wheelbarrows and large, wheeled trash cans, plunging shovels and rakes into mountains of mulch. They pause to acknowledge us […]

From my office, I heard their voices, the soft, deep rumble of Father training son. “Do you still need Lantus?” Kevin asked Adam, who grunted over the forced pause.  What is it about us that we resent the time it takes to grow? Lantus is to long-release insulin what Kleenex is to tissue, merely a […]