171Aug 31, 2018
When finally God begins to move me and I carry our quiet conversation back into busier thoroughfares, I find Adam emptying the dishwasher in the kitchen. He stacks plates and tosses clean silverware into the drawer with percussive clatter, and this with the morning barely an hour old. The coffee pot still gasps and sputters […]
172Aug 24, 2018
The sky, like the soft skin of a plum, ripens from the bottom, hinting at some sweet, fleshy truth beyond its careful covering. I rock back and forth in a rocker on the porch, relishing the chance to savor the change, wondering how it would be to peel back that top layer of rich cloud. […]
173Aug 17, 2018
On the other side of a migraine, my Riley begins to sing: From the ash I am born again Forever safe in the Savior’s hands I stop folding and let the warm towel fall from my fingers, listening. She missed worship today, let her head fall like a rock on my shoulder during the opening […]
174Aug 10, 2018
“There will be a lot of hugs today,” she says, drawing me in with arms growing long enough to catch the world. Her brassy hair falls against my cheek and lightly tickles my hands as I press them into her back. I count her ribs, the knobby vertebrae in her spine. She feels strong, solid, […]
175Aug 3, 2018
After supper and all our lingering, we wander from the table on the porch like suddenly unmoored boats, drifting away beneath the glow of the twinkle lights. Our conversation fades with a last few dropped notes above the drone of the cicadas and the clatter of silverware against our plates as we collect the remnants […]
176Jul 6, 2018
In the blaze of afternoon, we slide our chairs up to the table, turning coffee mugs with our fingers, light and quick. Let me look at you, I think, but I don’t say it aloud; my teenager finds overt attention awkward. I want to say “parenty” things she will not believe until she sits at a […]
177Jun 29, 2018
At the end of the day, when I walk in from the shore with the sunset on my cheeks and my skin still warm from the sun, I find the text: I know you’re at the beach, but I just had to tell you what happened today. The text comes from one of Adam’s gifted […]
178Jun 8, 2018
Sometimes, there aren’t words. Instead, there are smells–rotten and sour and wrecked. “Mom Jones? Oh, where is she?” I hear Riley before I see her, hear her thinking out loud down the hallway, peering into rooms, twisting that rope of sun-gold hair absently into an uneven bun. Her hair captures so much light I expect […]
179May 25, 2018
Knife taps against cutting board and the onion cries. The delicate scarlet rings fall, hiding the slicing scars, all those crisscrossed lines like a haphazard tally of breaths. If only the flavors–peppery and sun-soaked and honey-sweet–lasted as long as the evidence of our cooking. A sigh slips as I turn my burning eyes away from the […]
180May 11, 2018
Anger and hurt, dancing like the steam curling mad over my coffee cup, propel me under until criticism rolls off my tongue. The words have a metallic tang, as though I’ve bitten my lip. I draw my knees up into the chair, wrapping my fingers around my bare feet, feeling the bones. Zoe and I […]