61Apr 7, 2017
We run in that space just before the sunlight bursts new born, obliterating darkness; in that space where apart from the faithfulness of day, we’d not expect the arrival of Light at all. This is the parenthesis between rain showers, the tar-dark, murky stillness before another downpour, somehow carved for us like a silent pause. […]
62Mar 10, 2017
A mile from school, Adam’s insulin pod starts beeping, that insistant chirp we once never imagined knowing—one two three, one two three–not an emergency yet, but a countdown to it, and just as the stress knot in my neck begins to ease. “Mom, Adam’s beeping,” Riley says, reporting, as though I can tune out the […]
63Feb 24, 2017
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 […]
64Dec 2, 2016
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 […]
65Nov 25, 2016
The funny thing is that none of us remember the original prompt, now—it could have been outer space or video game or teeter totter, but we remember only purse, only the bizarre wrong thing it became when Adam gave up trying to guess. I’m not sure what it is about our human nature that we store up wrongs. But here […]
66Nov 4, 2016
I can hear them from the kitchen. Their laughter–giddy, riotous–bounces and floats, and every so often I catch a “yea, and–“, just the edge of a phrase, the words pointed and stretched for diving in. They have left this solid, dusty, hungry place for another realm, for a place where garden fairies dressed in glittery leaves co-exist […]
67Jun 17, 2016
Evening at the beach, and I’m swaying in the porch swing, pushing my toes against the deck planks. It’s too dark to see the ocean from where I sit, but I can just make out the faint, ever-changing lines of white caps, like fine, thin sketch marks adding dimension to shades of black and blue-gray. […]
68May 13, 2016
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 […]
69Apr 29, 2016
My daughter is sixteen, so for her birthday we throw a big party at the building where our church meets. And I receive this: a solid view of friendship. “Do you need help?” My friend asks, not in a maybe-I-can-do-a-few-things-if-it’s-convenient kind of way, but the way she always does, as though she’s already climbed up on that […]
70Nov 20, 2015
Dinner time–almost, and already the crisp darkness makes our window panes cold beneath my fingers. I switch on lamps to fill the room with light, light I hope will glow well beyond the house, slipping out around the edges of the panels of the curtains, beaming boldly through the glass. And with the light, I pray […]