I stand on my tiptoes a little now to brush Adam’s teeth, reminding myself not to hum aloud the thread of praise weaving through my thoughts because Adam will feel as though, while he’s already telling me it’s time to finish with his teeth, he must also ask me to stop humming, please, because the […]

“I’m concerned about Adam’s schedule for the summer,” Riley says to me, folding her hands in front of her and digging one toe into the outdoor carpet on our back porch. The hinges of the door haven’t yet stopped screeching, and a great wind rustles the leaves of the trees, and I take a deep […]

At some moment toward the end of every sweet vacation–this time while cool, briny waters lick at my feet and the sun warms my bare shoulders; while I meander along and consider that the ocean looks both a clear, clean green in the rise of the waves and like quicksilver on the surface—I begin to […]

In our house, we have learned to keep time this way, in days since the last seizure, but this is not something we carry along, not at all like some battered suitcase stuffed with all our worries and dragged along behind, but rather something acknowledged and touched by our hands and burned in the pasture, […]

“But, I’m not a baby,” the boy says, looking at up at me petulantly, with dark, bottomless eyes, his lips pursed in a pout.  “I’m eight.” Suddenly, I remember the voice of Jesus, calling us all his little children, even though some of us like to think we’re adults. I had called the boy Joshua […]

The day has gone long and, hungrily, we reach for plates; we stir seasoning into steaming bowls.  Kevin glances at Adam, who stands at the desk, absorbed in a video game, something about a leprechaun in search of a pot of gold. Quietly, the Father says to the son, “Hey, can you set the table?” […]

I am a stiff-necked woman. I smile as I think it, laying in the floor on an exercise mat that has seen better days, head on a folded beach towel I grabbed from the closet.  I count dust bunnies peeking out from their warrens—deep under the TV cabinet, beneath a wild tangle of electrical cords, […]

I am out walking beneath the clouds when I see them, the Father, broad, with a snatch of wild, dark hair that would have looked like flames lighting his head had it been any shade of red, and the tiny girl, still unsteady on her feet, wobbling along beside him, holding his hand.  He reminds […]

“How was your day?” I ask Riley as she slides into the car after work, and what I really mean is how were the last few hours, and what astounds me when I ask is that, as usual, she seems as peaceful as the ocean at low tide, still, like glass. “Work was amazing,” she […]

Beside me, my phone vibrates like a bee trapped in a jar, zooming frantically from side to side, beating its wings against the glass.  I lift it and flip it over so that the screen blinks on and I can see that the vibrating heyheyheyhey is not the emergency I had imagined it could be […]