Riley hears us on the stairs, the push-pull comedy of Kevin and me moving a desk up to the room from which Kevin now works most of the week. She hears her dad pouring out his strength; hears me straining to lift when the desk snags the edge of a step; hears both of us […]

I stand behind, holding Riley’s hair in my hands, twisting the damp lengths into Dutch braids while she thumbs through notifications on her phone. With practiced fingers I smooth the hair, which is honey brown when wet and, in places, darker with shadows. I weave, my hands trapped in the loom, and slowly an elegant […]

“What else I can do to help?” Riley asks again for maybe the sixth time, hands on her hips, that grin stretching wide. Riley loves to help. She asks this of my so-beautiful friend, who stands hot-cheeked and fingering a hasty ponytail, assessing an assortment of baskets heaped with supplies, a row of folding tables […]

The King rose from the feast table, an action that made everyone suddenly alert.  Words died in the air, only half spoken.  They watched while he removed his robe, and with it, they felt, his dignity.  But more alarming than his sudden nakedness was the costume he next chose.  The King picked up a towel, […]

She spreads the towel smooth with her fingers, dropping it gently across clean things still drying.  She dabs her fingers on the corner of a paper towel, turning to examine the countertops.  “Let’s see…is there anything else?”  She says this to no one, speaks it softly to herself in the quiet.  Ever since she found […]

I don’t know what she first thought when she saw those shoes, empty and waiting carefully, almost in anticipation just there in front of the chair, but I know she recognized them as her father’s.  The knowledge that he would surely need them soon arrested her progress, stopped her cold in the middle of certain […]

“I didn’t even realize he was wearing his sweatpants,” I say to my friend, gesturing with one finger toward my son, over to the back of the auditorium where Adam now paces, ankles showing blank below lanky black, just above those bruised-up tennis shoes he likes.  I’m not even sure that the elastic on the […]

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 […]

Well okay, not just the holidays.  I can’t ignore the resounding, soul-altering Comment:  This is not just for now. We linger, just souls pouring, and in those moments, walls fall.  The thunderous quake, the crashing of ugly pretense pushed down, is something I feel, something that shakes Heaven maybe, while here, our voices softly offer […]