Out of the corner of my eye, I see them kneeling in front of my son, knees pressed hard into the floor right there in front of the chair where Adam sits waiting for me, glancing at his watch.  I’m too far away to hear them, but I can tell that they’re talking to him, […]

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 gets up for me when it’s hard for her even to walk the length of the floor, and balancing on the one healing side, she hugs me, when I know it hurts to be touched the wrong way.  I’m on the way home to a lot of doing she couldn’t now do if she’d […]

From the basket, another sock.  I smooth it a little with my fingers, examining the fabric for those holes in the heel, in the places that bear the brunt of our steps.  I have my own gaping holes, I’m thinking, right in carefully hidden spaces, in brutally crushed places, smashed against the road.  This sock–bleach […]

They cast a long shadow on the lawn, all legs, son in so many ways like his father.  It’s striking.  Nothing really prepares a mother for the moments when she looks at her children and sees something of the adults they’re becoming, the careful sculpting of the future.  No matter how broad those shoulders get, I […]

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 […]

There’s only ever been one perfect love; only one that didn’t come out all lopsided, with smudges all over the edges. Time races up behind me and I have no choice but to microwave the butter I forgot to take out ahead.  I need it to cream, and ice-cold butter doesn’t cream.  I unfold the […]

The hour turns, and my friend waves me over, patting the chair beside. All evening, we have all only wanted to surround her, this iron-strong friend strong enough yet to admit that she needs us to lift her.  It takes a brave woman to allow the veil to fall—whisper-light—from her face, to sit uncovered and honest, to […]

I hear the door open, and with that sound comes the volume of her sadness, the distinct sound of brokenness.  Tears always steal her breath the way they still steal mine, and before I can see her I hear that awful gasp, the way she hungrily stuggles for air.  She cries with her whole body.  The […]

I confess that when she comes to get me, I do not want to get up. I just picked up my book—Dorothea Frank’s Plantation, and I have precious few moments to mind-leap on down to the Lowcountry and shut out the world.  Every time this author punctuates a sentence with the word yanh, I smell the […]