“So tell me everything you would like to do this afternoon,” I say, pulling a capless pen from the chipped bisque mug on the desk, sliding a notepad in front of me.  Pansies float around the edge of the paper.  The impressions of Adam’s carb counts from breakfast dent the blank top page, making a […]

Clutching the mug–round, steaming, creamy-warm, in the snug space between twinkle lights and the gentle glow of dawn, I push back my chair, leaving the porch with its weathered slats and plump, happy cushions.  The house feels still, dark, lightly chilled from the brisk morning.  Just past a silhoutted wave to father and daughter on […]

It’s an old, familiar, childhood question.  If you had just one wish, and you knew it would come true… It’s a genie question, hovering in smoke, the answer thought-whispered over snuffed out candles, wispy and curling.  Just once, it was a question of Biblical proportions, only God posed it differently, to a young king:  Ask […]

They sit waiting–my children and this party of their best friends, a huddled, cross-legged, patchwork group in costumes as vibrant and varied as they.  Even with the house lights dim, I see the startling glint of silver sequins, a neon vest, leotards and athletic jerseys.  I slip into a chair and just smile, holding my […]

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 […]

Mom, what will you write about today?    Her question is a gift; a jewel in my palm. She sits at the bar looking very nearly sixteen–golden head bent over her phone and all those little flyaways catching the early light; a cup of coffee just south of her hand, steaming; a dozen bracelets sliding […]

I like the way God built me.   She says it like it’s the simplest thing.  The words fall easy, fluttering elegant, lighting on a twisty varicose vein that branches pen-thin across my thigh.  I had been tracing the bruised lines with my finger.  These spidery betrayers invade, cracks in the shell of me suddenly […]

I don’t know how much time I have left.   Afternoon, and autumn leaves wander and twist to the earth, fluttering through the grass and along the sidewalk.  The sun makes a blaze of the trees.  I stop for a moment just to see, putting down my work, stunned by the fragility of life.  I […]

In the car at night and I can’t see her face, just the blur of headlights and the jostle of cars weaving in and out of lanes, just the green-lit signs labeling exits.  From behind me, she speaks, and the tentative way she shapes her words tells me that she chooses this time for the […]

She’s such a shining, starlit soul. She walks through the kitchen, where I gently lift lettuce leaves with my fingers, sorting the torn pieces into salad bowls. “Mom, what’s that?” She says, with a casual turn of her hand, a subtle gesture toward the line of butter yellow bowls. I know she doesn’t really mean, […]