From upstairs, I hear Riley saying her goodbyes to the members of her online class one by one, and every time the sentence full, as if acknowledgement simply must not be halfway done. In our home, where Autism rises like a wall, interrupting and limiting relationships, we exchange words as valuable currency; we fight for […]

Mid-morning, and my friend and I wander to the table, navigating around stacks of books and piles of tools, cardboard boxes, the basket of beach towels that belongs in the linen closet. The innards of several rooms sit on my living room floor, as though we turned the walls inside out and shook loose the […]

In the middle of the morning, I step back from the window, from that view of heavy clouds and leaves dripping rain like a cleansing grief, and feeling my own vulnerability, I wander down the hall to my husband. I walk in the room and he turns and I step into his arms without saying […]

In the morning, while the coffee drips and darkens and I pour rich cream into the bottom of a mug, Riley stands on a chair, riffling the contents of a cabinet in search of a flower vase. Yesterday, she walked in after school with armfuls of Valentine’s Day love–flowers and balloons and chocolates, fresh with […]

“It’s Monday!” Riley says, with the day still so new that the morning light looks soft and tentative and the chill outside clouds the windows. My favorite backyard tree looks bony and bare, empty-handed and reaching like me, but Riley glows like a sun-drenched bloom, pink-cheeked from sleep, bright with anticipation. I look up at […]

I sit down at the table next to Adam, and he smiles, silently tender. Love, that’s the recognition I see softening his features. It flickers, this light that shatters darkness: You love me, and I adore you, and here we are, together. You wonder maybe how Adam’s heart could be so plain to me, but […]

“I want to take care of you. Let me,” my friend says, pressing a lunch into my hands, even though it’s the last one she could eat and instead, she’ll be eating almonds and apricots from the stash she keeps in her purse. She doesn’t know she’s preaching. Here we are, the two of us […]

When the time comes to travel home, Riley throws her arms around Opa’s waist, presses her cheek against his chest and sobs.  She comes at him from the side, which turns the whole thing into a wonky lean, especially as she tries to shrink her body down to match her vulnerable feelings. “I think this […]

Mirrors lie, Amor Towles wrote in A Gentleman in Moscow.  I had to grab a pen and write the quote in my journal because it rang true, because I had heard those lies for most of my life.  I remember it now, away from home, as I walk through a glassy, windowed hallway and catch […]

Into the thin of night, during those turbulent hours when panic threatens the best of our rest; during those hours when the conversations of young friends become so exposed that with raw, sleepy voices they begin to truly know each other; during those hours when so many souls bound for home finally drift away; into […]