1Apr 22, 2022
I gather plates for Adam’s birthday cake; they clink in my hands. He wanted chocolate–the cake (the frosting, the ice cream), and I have already carried it in, along with the knife, long and shiny and sharp. The cake looks imperfect, and therefore perfect for us, shaped like a sweet, dark hill. I placed the […]
2Apr 20, 2018
Mid-morning and they wander out to me, rested and fresh from sleep, blanket lines on their high-boned cheeks. Riley’s brassy hair swings out from her shoulders, lifted by the breeze, as she settles into the chair across from me, carrying her breakfast. “Happy birthday, Mom Jones,” she says, while Zoe gently drops a present on […]
3Apr 29, 2016
My daughter is sixteen, so for her birthday we throw a big party at the building where our church meets. And I receive this: a solid view of friendship. “Do you need help?” My friend asks, not in a maybe-I-can-do-a-few-things-if-it’s-convenient kind of way, but the way she always does, as though she’s already climbed up on that […]
4Apr 27, 2012
Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you…(Genesis 9:14,15). Twelve years old, and she asks for rainbows for her birthday. My rainbow, this reminder that God is faithful; this beauty—a whole spectrum of color, Light bent through rain until we see […]