81Nov 13, 2015
She walks in just as I slide my weary bones down into the water, just as the steam curls up over my knees and I give thanks for simple pleasures I know full well that some do without—hot, clean water flowing by the gallons at the twist of a knob; sweet-smelling soap. Hi, she says […]
82Nov 6, 2015
She apologizes to Kevin like we autism mamas do, ignoring the sharp, slicing pain it brings just to say the words. I’m sorry, my daughter–she has autism. She doesn’t mean nothing by it. She says this gesturing over something Kevin barely noticed, a failure to say hello, a back turned, a little stumble over […]
83Aug 7, 2015
Stinging words curl through the grapevine like searing smoke, and I gasp, suffocating. I am distracted by a black storm, by the flicking tongue of a squint-eyed snake bent on spreading its own dark poison. The deception threatens the fixing of my eyes. Except. Except that God is my Father. And He hasn’t left me […]
84Jun 26, 2015
Help. I write the word in plum today, and in the curve of the e, the marker squeaks against the whiteboard. Help really isn’t the right word. It’s as inadequate as the word serve for describing what we do for God. Learn would be the better verb if this schedule were truly about accuracy, but from my son’s […]
85Jun 19, 2015
I recognize the symbol immediately–the faded rainbow lines tattooed onto the back of her neck, the needle-pieced, needle-etched shape of just one part of a global puzzle. The top edge of her taffy-pink scrubs hides most of the word beneath, but I can barely make out the upper third of the black script letter ‘A.’ […]
86May 29, 2015
I like doing this with you, she says, and I look away from the wild roses just beyond us in the yard, their bold red beauty twisting madly toward the limitless sky, jutting elegantly through the slats. Their freedom completely captures me, that and the way they’ve doubled in size, the way they reach in the […]
87May 8, 2015
Psst…I have rediscovered the secret to mothering without limits. And just in time for Mother’s Day. Sometimes in the middle of a meal, she puts down her fork, a thin tink against scalloped edge. The silver flashes, a change in the light just barely perceived, as she loosens her grip. Oh my, the things that happen to […]
88Apr 3, 2015
On the porch in the early morning and the light all new, I lift my hand in the air, bending my fingers into the sign for love. And Adam, looking through the window as he leaves for school, tilts his head, studying the gesture. He looks at his own hand as Kevin backs out in […]
89Oct 31, 2014
In the morning, on the way to school, this is His nudge for me: You need to touch your daughter. So I reach over and take one of her hands in one of mine, steering the car with the other. Zoe doesn’t look at me, but she squeezes gently, running her thumb back and forth […]
90May 9, 2014
I walk into the kitchen from the garage, carrying an armful of things—a bag, a few books, a coffee mug someone left behind—on my way to distribute these and consider the afternoon climb, and one of my daughters presses into me, draping the now dangling legs, grasping me solid, clinging to me with now enfolding […]