“I guess it’s about that time,” Kevin says, glancing at the clock and then at me, meaning time for us to set aside our books and our lazy attitudes, time to get dressed in our wedding clothes. I think of the dress I bought, hanging upstairs on a hanger in the closet, the silver brocade […]

Why must we struggle through absolutely everything? Sometimes that question becomes the refrain of a day, the melancholy sigh that sounds as I run out of breath slogging up the hills, as a cramp ramps up in the side of my foot, as I stand in the kitchen cutting chicken with my sharpest knife. Pain […]

Mid-morning, and my friend and I wander to the table, navigating around stacks of books and piles of tools, cardboard boxes, the basket of beach towels that belongs in the linen closet. The innards of several rooms sit on my living room floor, as though we turned the walls inside out and shook loose the […]

On a rainy morning, the drops like sheets, the thickness of clouds casting shadow over waking, Kevin and I wander from our room in search of coffee. Riley pauses at the top of the stairs to greet us, bright-voiced, sunshine breaking. “How are you feeling?” Kevin asks, but seeing her puzzled, wobbly expression, quickly amends, […]

I lose my patience promptly at 11 o’clock, as though the last of it just fell away, grain by grain, at the turn of the hour. “What have you been doing for the last hour?” I ask, bleary-eyed and frivolous, sleep seeping in at the edges of my vision. Riley stands just outside my bedroom […]

Late afternoon, I fold bath towels, touching the unraveling sides with my fingers, thinking of all the skin these towels have dried, all the cleaning, all the blessing in their worn softness; thinking this can happen to bodies too, that I want to age and unravel through years of humble service. The warmth of the […]

“There you are, Mom,” Riley says, even though I have been walking beside her the last half hour, even though she has never lost sight of me.  She says this with joy and without rebuke, as though I am the prodigal, momentarily disappeared and just returned, as though she’s been watching for me. She continues […]

In the middle of the morning, I step back from the window, from that view of heavy clouds and leaves dripping rain like a cleansing grief, and feeling my own vulnerability, I wander down the hall to my husband. I walk in the room and he turns and I step into his arms without saying […]

In the morning, while the coffee drips and darkens and I pour rich cream into the bottom of a mug, Riley stands on a chair, riffling the contents of a cabinet in search of a flower vase. Yesterday, she walked in after school with armfuls of Valentine’s Day love–flowers and balloons and chocolates, fresh with […]

In the afternoon, we walk, and Riley’s normal sunshine has turned to storm, silent, brooding thick like the blanketing clouds of winter. I have stopped glancing toward her, because when I do, she glances away; and I’ve stopped asking, because my questions make her dissolve into embarrassed grief. Unintentionally, I’ve taught her that sadness has […]