Morning breezes across the one knee I’ve drawn up to my chest, across the bare top of the other foot I push against the floor so the rocker will rock.  The messy bun on the back of my head bobs against weathered wood and woven reeds, and I find myself thankful for freedom, the freedom […]

I slide the last pin in place, just at the bottom of the glossy braid.  This one reminds me of a seashell, woven wide and spiraling low, bright at the top where the sun has turned her hair a tawny gold, like wheat.  She smiles and the light moves right into her face. “Thanks, Mom […]

I put a damp cloth in Adam’s hands and point toward the bathtub.  “Go ahead, wipe it clean, now.” “We don’t have to clean the bathroom,” he says to me, because he doesn’t like scrubbing bathtubs any more than most of the rest of us.  And that’s his new thing, as if life spins on […]

We wind our way along Pier 60 just as the sun dips, melting gold right into the ocean. I stand a moment and just breathe, watching the way the waves rise, wind-shaped right out of the glass sea. The pier is a flurry of activity as the city gears up for a festival on the […]

Finally together at the end of the day, and the murmur of quiet activity is grace.  Riley sits with her feet tucked under her at the bar, giggling over a word that twisted in her mouth when she said it, all those wispy, mussed hairs falling golden around her cheeks.  Zoe saunters in on sock […]

I don’t know what she first thought when she saw those shoes, empty and waiting carefully, almost in anticipation just there in front of the chair, but I know she recognized them as her father’s.  The knowledge that he would surely need them soon arrested her progress, stopped her cold in the middle of certain […]

In the waiting room, she reaches for my hand, lacing her long fingers through my own.  She presses her palm flat against my palm until all the lines meet, intersecting for a stretch and then contradicting, all posts and crossbeams.  Her moon eyes speak paragraphs over still lips, tightly drawn.  They are imploring blue–those eyes, […]

Standing there elegant in front of us all, she says to him, “I choose love.  I choose you. I choose the wonderful things about you and the things that drive me nuts.  I choose the good days and the bad ones,” and her voice doesn’t even quaver. She is radiant with chosenness, and it strikes me that […]

It really wasn’t until we turned into the neighborhood—5 minutes, maybe, from home–that the ice really made me nervous.  An hour and a half away, we’d started to see a dusting, just bits of dazzling white in the grass; here and there, a glassy ditch or frozen puddle. If it’s like this here, Zoe murmured then, […]

They are inside the gas station maybe 5 minutes.  The girls and I wander in while father and son linger at the pump, and then they follow us in, more efficient, by far, than we.  Early morning, and ours is the only vehicle left at at least eight nozzles, though the three dusty spaces beside […]