I really don’t know what to say anymore, she says to me, and I understand, because when you say everything true and it doesn’t seem to make a difference you finally run out of words.  They drain and fall away, leaving only echoes like bits of fluttering ash.  And in the aftermath of a wordy, difficult […]

So, I’m sitting here in tears, can bearly see the screen for the flow of grace, like the soft rain falling just beyond the window.  I count gifts all the time, because it’s one of the most powerful ways I know to keep these dim eyes glued on Truth, and this one gusts in to fill […]

Psst…I have rediscovered the secret to mothering without limits.  And just in time for Mother’s Day. Sometimes in the middle of a meal, she puts down her fork, a thin tink against scalloped edge.  The silver flashes, a change in the light just barely perceived, as she loosens her grip.  Oh my, the things that happen to […]

https://instagram.com/p/1yb3PWtTXa/ At every event, Adam stands too close.  I have to keep drawing him back to me.  Sometimes I hook an arm around his waist, sometimes I just catch his eyes with mine and say, come here.  But he bounces forward, right up to that white-chalk line on the grass, and it’s not his turn […]

We wander down the grocery aisle, me with my head buried in a list, Zoe pushing the cart, Riley walking just behind, quietly trying to breathe. Zoe reaches toward me with her eyes.  I feel the gaze grab hard, and I look up and toward my daughter.  Zoe sucks in her belly and stiffens her […]

Walking behind him, I can see clearly that his jeans only just reach his ankles.  The nurse talks over her shoulder—okay, follow me and then some small talk about the weather, the red file folder jutting out, an extension of her hand that messes up all the angles.  She fills the space with words so light […]

“I always eat slowly right before school.”  She says it quietly, when she knows I stand listening, when it’s just the two of us in the room. Two days back to school, and every morning Riley comments that she’s cold and wraps her legs with a blanket.  She sometimes tries to stand so that I […]

Afternoon, and I give thanks that I am sitting alone in the waiting room at the pediatric dental office, because this gratitude always comes fresh.  I never forget the difference between now and then, those days when I held my tears because of his, when it took three people just to clean his teeth.  They used […]

I walk in, and she sits alone on the third row—she, only here to be with; she, who forgets how to breathe when being means there’s just too much to absorb.  She has the courage of a lion, and most don’t even know.  A movie flashes large on the screen at the front of the room, but I […]

In the moonlight, her eyes sparkle.  She never wears makeup, doesn’t really even prefer it, but she made a concession tonight, for dance.  Just now, as we leave the building, a brisk wind lifts a few errant strands of hair away from her ears.  The stars rest glittery on her cheeks. I hold the door, […]