Before the sun, I’m up, roaming the kitchen. The vinyl tile faintly settles beneath my feet, lightly popping like my stiff knees, like that tight place in my neck. I gently twist, warming up for the day, turning toward the kettle spitting steam on the stove. The piping water gushes, splashing a little as I […]

“What else I can do to help?” Riley asks again for maybe the sixth time, hands on her hips, that grin stretching wide. Riley loves to help. She asks this of my so-beautiful friend, who stands hot-cheeked and fingering a hasty ponytail, assessing an assortment of baskets heaped with supplies, a row of folding tables […]

“Who are these for?” Zoe asks, watching as I pour caramel sauce into dessert cups.  The sticky, golden ribbons slide off of the end of the spoon, pooling.   She’s grinning, tossing the words as though in joust. “Well,” I begin, carefully dipping the spoon back into the pot for more of the buttery sweet.  But […]

On the other side of a migraine, my Riley begins to sing: From the ash I am born again Forever safe in the Savior’s hands I stop folding and let the warm towel fall from my fingers, listening. She missed worship today, let her head fall like a rock on my shoulder during the opening […]

Riley walks in the door in the afternoon, backpack slung over one shoulder, conversation and friendship glowing warm on her cheeks.  It’s as though laughter rests on the tip of her tongue. “How was school?” I say, rising from the worn table where Zoe and I have been sipping coffee, where our meandering words have […]

“What’s this?” she says, leaning into the doorway, that smile wide.  She wears blue eyeshadow, like tiny snatches of bright sky calling her eyes up. I explain that Riley and I are the proprietresses of the stocking stuffer room.  “Mmmhmm,” Riley chirps agreeably and the ball on her Santa hat bobs, while I guesture toward […]

The journal was a gift from my parents; the cover black, like pitch, like a blind dark day.  Butterflies explode from the corner, brilliant blue, buttery gold, every size, hundreds of them by surprise, overwhelming all that flat emptiness.  I run my fingers over the raised edges of their wings, feeling the fine lines, the […]

I step down the ladder and balance my paintbrush on the edge of the can, reaching down to trace the paint-tattoo on my knee with one finger.  This now dry glob—when did that happen?–looks like a Maui Mist cloud, all wispy at the edges.  I clench and unclench my hands, sore, noticing the red welts rising like blistering […]

It’s hard to explain what it’s like, watching a child slowly connect, as though another sidelined piece of the puzzle has suddenly locked into place; it’s hard to describe the shape of that grin, the one that knows the sweet taste of grace, but here it is, for us: He sits cross-legged in the center […]

Travel weary and temporarily keyless, we knock, feeling as dusty as the door, as parched as the plants.  I run my thumb along the delicate thinning edge of a swooping leaf, crisp and browned, like old parchment.  On the door, the vinyl letters have broken in places and begun to curl away, even as they still […]