In the afternoon, we burst through the door, with three different conversations knotting in the air—one thread hard to follow, one dangling, one darting so fast I can’t keep up.  A general fumbling ensues for snacks, and Mom, I need to tell you, and What I have to do today is, and May I watch Tom and Jerry, […]

Shine the light bright, just there. Tuesday night and we restlessly weave our way through the double doors, a slowly meandering people-river, a jumble of fabric and purses and shoes.  We move patiently, craning our necks, and the sound of us ebbs and flows—the voices, the walking, the slide of our clothes.  A security guard […]

The older I get, the more I treasure handmade things. I look around, and those are the things that still touch me—the emblems of love carefully knitted or sewn together, the artwork sometimes curvy and crooked that wears my children’s fingerprints.  Every year at Christmas, I hang fabric stockings one of my beautiful aunts pieced […]

The truth is, our living is messy. It isn’t the carefully selected photos we share on Facebook. In the flurry of morning readying, I reach into the cabinet for a cereal bowl. A red-brown something has dried over the blue and purple flowers, and something tiny green and branching like a tree—something resembling a flattened […]

I am an everyday daughter of the King. Or, I am a daughter of the King every day. It’s all a matter of how I hold those words—wrapped sweaty and sqeezed together in the palm or held up to the Light.  I’ve come to see that the way I order those two words—where and how I […]

On the bar in the kitchen, I find a scrap of paper she has forgotten.  The blocked letters and lines and paragraphs seem too serious for her, too stark.  Name: _______________________________ Title/Description for yourself (something you would naturally say to introduce yourself): _______________________________.  Her handwriting softens the lines, beautiful, plain, easy.  Riley.  Peace. I lay […]

“1,2,3…Okay, Mom—I’m going to count how many people signed my yearbook.  Let’s see how many I have.” And she begins again, confident that she has my attention.  “Let’s see, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…and here I have 9, 10, 11, 12,”she says, counting the ones who wrote words and the […]

I bring my children home in the afternoon, as the sun beats hot on the pavement, and the one talks so quickly the words stick to each other as they pass through her lips.   She has stories and I was like and then questions and what are we and then she fills in the space by […]

I admit it:  Sometimes my attitude stinks. I wake up heart sick—breathing sighs, swallowing complaint, coughing up rot.  It spreads quickly, my gray brooding.  Suddenly I look around, and my husband and children carry my heavy.  My ungratefulness wraps their shoulders, black and thick-chained.  And together we ache, weary of this place, and our blinded […]

Just as the morning becomes, we run together beneath the sun.  A light breeze wraps our shoulders.  I glance up at the sky—blue, the color rich like Morpho wings, with wisps of sea foam cloud.  I stare hard, gasping.  Day after day, the heavens pour forth speech.  “They have no speech, they use no words; […]