While I dice the chicken, one hand gripping the knife, I teach Riley how to make potato salad. “So, what’s the next thing you need to do?” I ask her, nodding toward an armful of a silver bowl piled high with tender chopped potatoes.  Two eggs, hardboiled with the potatoes, peek out from among the […]

I run my finger over the scars on the dresser in my bedroom, Grandma, twice etched, raw, like an incision in the wood in Riley’s handwriting.  Always in twos. I murmur the dark echo of an old cliché, the shadow of an old joke still half bitter to me, but only by half, because God […]

Home from carpool, I pull the wet, clean clothes from our washer and toss them, with a shake, into the dryer.  I can hear Riley in the kitchen, her voice bright and morning-new, counting to Christmas.  “Just 18 more,” she says, with enthusiasm, but I push the button on the machine and lose the rest […]

It can feel like I’m stuck in the dark. And it can feel like life’s too loud. I made a centerpiece for our table out of evergreen boughs, a silver wreath accented with bits of mirrored glass, like gems, tall blood red candles, and a few ancient ornaments.  Christmas decorations always need two things, in […]

Gently, I lay a hand on Adam’s back, feeling the knobs of his spine, hard and round beneath my fingers.  Silently he watches as, with the other hand, I press a sticky note down on the desk in front of him. At the top, today’s date, scrawled quickly.  When matters; it anchors the whole thing. […]

In the hallway at our neurologist’s office, as Riley and I breeze along behind the medical assistant on the way to an exam room, I realize again how much my daughter has grown up. It’s a flaw of ours as parents, that while we encourage and facilitate growth in our children, we lack proficiency in […]

In the early morning, Adam and I sit waiting again beside the waterfall-on-a-wall in the oral surgeon’s office, me with my scrubbed face and the early hour puffing around my eyes, he with his hair still snarled in the back where he always forgets to brush. He did not complain when I wrote our schedule […]

Riley walks in carrying a package, her arms wrapped wide around a big plastic mailer, and I suddenly remember to receive God’s gifts and give thanks. “There is a package for Mom,” she says, her chin bobbing against the load,” and I’m guessing it has something to do with Christmas.” She’s right, of course. To […]

Riley stands at my elbow, watching over my shoulder as I peel a gold foil star from a sticker sheet and press it carefully on the grid in front of me. I can feel her t-shirt billowing as she leans, her hair tickling my arm as it slides off her shoulders. “There goes my star […]

In the late afternoon, I talk to Zoe on the phone, stretching my legs out in front of me, craning my neck toward the window to savor that beautiful golden hue that becomes the light at near-finish. Zoe and I will meander over miles of thoughts, sharing a pilgrim feast while I hold on my […]