Arms full of teenaged girls, every afternoon.  I mean, I have their hair in my mouth.  Those long, honeyed strands fly in my face whenever my daughters curl their lithe bodies into me, the one pressing her cheek into my lap, the other settling her ear on my shoulder, reaching for my hand with long, bronzed […]

Buttonhooks, he says. Buttonhooks?  The zucchini in my hand drips. I run a thumb over a crack in its waxy green skin, listening. “Buttonhooks!  ButtonHOOKS!” He tries hard to annunciate; I can hear each letter’s effort, the work to shape it with his tongue.  Placing vegetable on cutting board, I turn toward him, leaning to see […]

“Where are you going?” He asks, in a voice muffled with sleep, a voice just on the edge of awareness. My hand stills on the doorknob.  I turn back toward him, not much more than a shadow. “I’m goi–I can’t sleep.”  My voice falls lightly.  “I need to—I don’t want to keep you awake,” I […]

In the dark, we slide our feet into flip flops, creeping out the door with steamy mugs of coffee balanced in our hands, with plump towels draped and dangling from our arms.  Whispering, we search the sky for signs of first light, for wisps of cotton-candy pink.   Carefully we descend the stairs, touching foot […]

I walk in from my first round of morning carpool, and she sits at the bar, twisting a long ribbon of brassy hair around her finger.  Through the open door that extends our home past the threshhold and anchors it truly as part of a much broader world, I can hear the birds tweeting madly, […]

She comes to find me on the porch, settling lightly on the double rocker next to me, shimmying her body close to mine.  The warm wind picks up a stray piece of her hair and plasters it across her forehead.  She leans against the pillows, considering me briefly, reaching up to tuck that wild strand […]

Early evening, and already I feel splintered and scattered and sore from carrying the day.  It has been one of those—the kind of day that wakes me before the sun, pressing into me in the emptied hours, and then sends me chasing time and late for everything; the kind of day in which, right from […]

Adam finds me sometimes, just to talk about the things that excite him. I’m one of the few with whom he’ll take that still awkward step, because he can appreciate the way that I know him, the way womb-forged bonds overcome every other kind of separation.  I almost always know what Adam means to say before he says […]

In the early hours before the sun rises, we rise, and we’re so tired we move around in silence for a while, fumbling to make the bed, pressing back against sleepiness to dress for exercise before we find an excuse.  We’ve tried so hard for intentionality with regard to first things—time with God, time with each […]

“Hey now, offer him grace, okay?” She sits in front of me, tears pooling in the pit of the day, and I wash onions off of my hands with soap meant to smell like a sunrise sail.  It won’t be enough.  I know that, but I try anyway.  Hours from now, my fingers will still smell […]