1Jul 14, 2017
We are growing stronger here, together. I say this to her as we walk along the beach, leaving impressions of our feet in the sand. With every purposeful step, the soft shore sinks. The salty sea rolls over our footprints, filling the heels, the toes, making briny tidepools and minuscule islands—our own desolate Lilliput, soon […]
2Apr 21, 2017
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 […]
3Jan 13, 2017
It really wasn’t until we turned into the neighborhood—5 minutes, maybe, from home–that the ice really made me nervous. An hour and a half away, we’d started to see a dusting, just bits of dazzling white in the grass; here and there, a glassy ditch or frozen puddle. If it’s like this here, Zoe murmured then, […]
4Oct 21, 2016
Travel weary and temporarily keyless, we knock, feeling as dusty as the door, as parched as the plants. I run my thumb along the delicate thinning edge of a swooping leaf, crisp and browned, like old parchment. On the door, the vinyl letters have broken in places and begun to curl away, even as they still […]
5Oct 30, 2015
The look on his face is stern as we approach, as though he knows already that there’s something suspiciously wrong about us. I smile, because I’m pretty sure what he does must be tiring. He must have seen all kinds of things from that perch, watching the hundreds of us file through like worn mules […]
6Nov 28, 2014
We will travel a long way to be with family. Dark as pitch in the pouring rain, lights reflecting on the wet road, and our kids settle in with pillows and blankets—two wide-eyed; one quickly asleep again. I grip a tumbler full of coffee–black and murky like the night sky–in my chilled hands, preparing myself […]
7Oct 28, 2011
Word to the wise: when you step off the airplane in Mexico, prepare to be deceived. The plane lands, and we share a conspiratorial smile, Kevin and me. It is the smile of sixteen years as best friends, our souls all blended together; the smile that travels all the way up to our eyes, glinting […]