In the predawn, I spread my journal open on my lap, smoothing the pages, pressing tape down to affix to the blank page a card I received for my birthday.  Slowly, I reread every word, tracing the curling signature with my thumb, determined to actively take hold of love. There will be days when I’m […]

“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 […]

“What do you appreciate about your mom?” Kevin asks the kids on Mother’s Day, while we sit in the booth thumbing the laminated menus, waiting for the server to reappear and take our order for lunch. I shift uncomfortably, looking away, sliding my hands against the red vinyl booth, feeling that it will burden them […]

This cluttered morning, sweaty with exercise, I bend myself into a stretch that makes me sigh with pleasure. Nothing feels better to me after a workout than the patient extension of sore and weary muscles, that resting pull that draws out pain with so much tension. Routinely, I pull my shoulders down, away from my […]

I slide the last pin in place, just at the bottom of the glossy braid.  This one reminds me of a seashell, woven wide and spiraling low, bright at the top where the sun has turned her hair a tawny gold, like wheat.  She smiles and the light moves right into her face. “Thanks, Mom […]