“Mom?” Riley reaches into the cabinet to my right, rising up on her toes behind me, leaning like a shoot. I wash dishes at the sink, my sore hands soothed by the hot water, the soft soap. The bottoms of my feet hurt from standing so long, and at the end of an afternoon spent […]

“What do you appreciate about your mom?” Kevin asks the kids on Mother’s Day, while we sit in the booth thumbing the laminated menus, waiting for the server to reappear and take our order for lunch. I shift uncomfortably, looking away, sliding my hands against the red vinyl booth, feeling that it will burden them […]

Fresh from the shower on an 80-degree day that feels thick with the promise of Summer, Adam spins–literally–into the kitchen wearing flannel pajama pants–buffalo check–and a salt-washed long-sleeved t-shirt as blue as his eyes. I wonder how he doesn’t instantly feel that sticky prickle of after-shower sweat at the base of the neck and the […]

Riley sits at the bar, fresh-faced and bright, if still a little rumpled with sleep. She looks like Spring, like the first day of sapphire skies; like new flowers with blushing, velvet leaves; like anticipation; like hope sitting right there on a bench in my kitchen., and it’s striking to me because it’s the opposite […]

As soon as Kevin leaves the room, Riley slips through the open door and flops on the sofa beside me, hairbrush in one hand, all that hair still dark wet and snarled, swinging against her back and scattering droplets. Immediately I notice her red-rimmed eyes, but choose not to say anything at first, carefully sliding […]

“Let me tell you my God story,” my mom says over the phone, and immediately I hear the difference in her voice, how burden falls and crumbles, how joy swells. She laughs, an eternal, ageless sound. I’m driving, and still I sit forward a little in my seat, anticipating. It can be easy, in sharing […]

Saturday morning, and Kevin and I call Adam downstairs to cook. Kevin has been teaching Adam to make creamy garlic cheese grits for Saturday morning brunch, but we like to try different menus, and weeks have passed since they last cooked together. “Get your recipe,” Kevin says, gesturing with one hand toward the drawer where […]

That breeze today, it tickles my cheeks, warm Autumn winds dancing over rising hills, an invisible thumb tracing the lines of my face. I press my hand flat against the pages to keep them from drifting up. That hand, it’s my mother’s hand, perpetually tanned, rooted with veins like a stretch of earth beneath a […]

Upstairs, I fill a basket with the things Riley will need after her shower–hairbrush, deodorant, pajamas. I tap my fingers on plastic, rub them against soft fabric, ticking off items by touch. I consider the warmth of the night air, how Riley turns on the fan even when it’s cool, how particular she will be […]

In the morning, we friends gather on Zoom, collecting on a screen the way we once surrounded coffee shop tables, dropping handbags on the floor, dragging over extra chairs, only now new windows open into presence in front of us like blinking eyes, and here I sit at home with my wet-from-the-shower hair, and we […]