“Mom, guess what?!” Riley says. From the living room, I can hear the zip as she opens her bookbag, the rattle of papers as she searches. “What?” I ask, somewhat dutifully, being both distracted and also fully familiar with Riley’s enthusiasm for ordinary details. Once, she behaved this way before producing a list of movies […]

Once upon a time, there lived a boy who struggled to talk, and because he struggled to talk, he also struggled to make connections, even with the people he loves. “Adam, tonight you pick the topic of conversation,” Kevin says, as we, The Blessed Ones, gather around our table at the end of the day. […]

Within the first five minutes of her arrival, our new friend Stella sits doubled-over, arms folded tightly against her waist. It’s move-up morning in kids’ ministry, and Stella has just finished the first grade. This is her first time in the chaotic whirl of the older elementary group. A young friend pats my back, interrupting […]

I gather plates for Adam’s birthday cake; they clink in my hands. He wanted chocolate–the cake (the frosting, the ice cream), and I have already carried it in, along with the knife, long and shiny and sharp. The cake looks imperfect, and therefore perfect for us, shaped like a sweet, dark hill. I placed the […]

I lose my patience promptly at 11 o’clock, as though the last of it just fell away, grain by grain, at the turn of the hour. “What have you been doing for the last hour?” I ask, bleary-eyed and frivolous, sleep seeping in at the edges of my vision. Riley stands just outside my bedroom […]

The Spirit says, pray, so we do. Happy Friday, friends!

“There you are, Mom,” Riley says, even though I have been walking beside her the last half hour, even though she has never lost sight of me.  She says this with joy and without rebuke, as though I am the prodigal, momentarily disappeared and just returned, as though she’s been watching for me. She continues […]

In the morning, while the coffee drips and darkens and I pour rich cream into the bottom of a mug, Riley stands on a chair, riffling the contents of a cabinet in search of a flower vase. Yesterday, she walked in after school with armfuls of Valentine’s Day love–flowers and balloons and chocolates, fresh with […]

“I want to take care of you. Let me,” my friend says, pressing a lunch into my hands, even though it’s the last one she could eat and instead, she’ll be eating almonds and apricots from the stash she keeps in her purse. She doesn’t know she’s preaching. Here we are, the two of us […]

In the afternoon, we walk, and Riley’s normal sunshine has turned to storm, silent, brooding thick like the blanketing clouds of winter. I have stopped glancing toward her, because when I do, she glances away; and I’ve stopped asking, because my questions make her dissolve into embarrassed grief. Unintentionally, I’ve taught her that sadness has […]