We take up an entire row in the airplane—Kevin with Adam on one side, me with Josh and Riley on the other.  This placement, of course, has been strategic: the young one with the most fear smack beside his Father, so close he can feel the warmth of him, can hear his dad living, breathing […]

“I guess it’s about that time,” Kevin says, his morning voice soft as new day, whisper-light as that dawn blush warming up the quiet blue sky over the treetops, those trees, still unlit, wearing green as deep as night. I hear timid pops in the joints of his rocking chair as he stands to go […]

We sit down, expanded family stretched out in the middle of a row up at the top of the lecture hall where they’re hosting graduation for Josh’s and Riley’s college program, and my mama mind thinks, it’s a lovely view from up here, really, perched as we are like birds on a line, watching from […]

Rain falls outside, a whisper of sound, and looking out the window, through drops like tiny diamonds on the glass, I soak up a saturation of breathing green, the thickness of leaves and wild, dazzling grass. Glancing back toward my phone, the Bible app open, my finger paused on a phrase, I wonder what it […]

I sit by the sea, digging my toes into soft sand, soothed by the crashing waves.  The sparkling vastness of the water glimmers behind my reading, God’s letter in my hands, soft from all my folding and unfolding. A prayer plants me like a seed buried to live in a wild, fertile love so big […]

Friday morning sun lightly peeks around the edges of the curtains.  I sit snug in the corner of the sofa early feasting on God, and Adam paces the downstairs rooms before school, his feet padding out a metronome count—this this this this THIS—against the floor.  This this this this THIS, this this this this THIS, […]

Riley comes home from work happy, initiating this, “Hey mom? One of the patients was so kind to me today.” She unloads her arms of purse and coffee cup, then unclips the badge from the collar of her shirt, and I wonder what it is about coming in from a day that we somehow also […]

“Hey Riley?” Zoe’s voice comes light from my phone, which sits on the kitchen island in the center of the room as Kevin and I turn and twist around finishing dinner; Adam, announcing his echolalia, paces a fast, hungry track around the perimeter; and Riley sits at the bar facing us, wearing a listening grin, […]

Riley spends her first two days doing orientation course work in a tiny room in the unpresentable behind-the-back-curtain part of the hospital, beyond the helpful forward-facing signs and the corridors frequented by patients and visitors. She shows me the place several days later, when I walk her into work for her first day training in […]

Running late, as usual, I feel stressed. I imagine myself purpling and breathless, like some vile thing has me by the neck as I sit out in the car thumping the steering wheel with my thumbs, willing my Riley to finish her checking rituals—and yes, I took my morning pills, and yes, it looks like […]