I walk and let things go, whispered things, all the heavy and daunting things pressed against my shoulders like so much Winter weight, damp and thick and flat grey; things that cannot be at all what they seem.   This weather inspires every kind of ache; all day the clouds have swallowed us.  And if this […]

At first, Riley can’t see. Bright Sunday morning, and we’re just inside the building where the church meets saying hello, a bunch of mismatched, layered-up family wearing reunion smiles, and I see her bending over her clipboard, too low, too close, one eye flat closed like a patch and the other just barely a slit.  […]

Since I got home, I’ve been trying to see with my ocean eyes–the ones scrubbed, rubbed and salt-glazed like old viridian sea glass, but everywhere I look, something is out of place. In the morning after breakfast, I sweep, my fingers still rubbery and root-shriveled from the dish water.  Sometimes the receding tide carves lines […]

We gather to pray, our chairs pulled together in hasty circles.  The whole room echoes.  We make knots–so many weak-kneed, hungry children–tangling together to sort out the kinks in our hearts.  It strikes me sometimes, how our strongest posture can look from the outside like our weakest.  But see, there’s nothing stronger than being with […]

I put a damp cloth in Adam’s hands and point toward the bathtub.  “Go ahead, wipe it clean, now.” “We don’t have to clean the bathroom,” he says to me, because he doesn’t like scrubbing bathtubs any more than most of the rest of us.  And that’s his new thing, as if life spins on […]

On our way home.  It was pretty rough. Eight words.  I toss my phone down on the bed, sighing, and glance into the hallway at the window diagonal to my room.  Close those blinds and Riley will wrap the cord in her elegant fingers and tug them open again.  It’s something we share, this affection–a […]

I remember the year that opening gifts made my daughter weep. She stood in front of me, just there, tight blond curls falling haphazardly around her ears, belly pudging out the shirt of her Christmas pajamas, holding a silvery gift.  At 3, she still didn’t understand our expectant faces, or even what made toys fun, […]

I just want to feel better, she says, looking at me with those eyes–wide, blue like crisp Fall; those eyes that still say Mom, fix this, please, even though we’re both well past the point of believing I could actually do that. Her bookbag thunks to the floor and she tugs at her skinny jeans, […]

Arms full of teenaged girls, every afternoon.  I mean, I have their hair in my mouth.  Those long, honeyed strands fly in my face whenever my daughters curl their lithe bodies into me, the one pressing her cheek into my lap, the other settling her ear on my shoulder, reaching for my hand with long, bronzed […]

Twinkle lights cast warm light over their cheeks, their tawny skin, their sun-gold hair.  The summer breeze lifts long, errant strands—mermaid-streaked deep maroon-purple, steel blue.  The girls slide their thumbs over their foreheads, corraling without thinking.  As the day fades along the edges of the dinner hour and the five of us gather on the […]