It comes to me, the freedom in not needing to know, like the tickle of a wild wind on my emptied palms, when a friend asks what time our flight, Kevin’s and mine, leaves for Boston. We walk down a greenway trail, around a bend I’ve never seen, in a place I’ve never been, near […]

I stand on my tiptoes a little now to brush Adam’s teeth, reminding myself not to hum aloud the thread of praise weaving through my thoughts because Adam will feel as though, while he’s already telling me it’s time to finish with his teeth, he must also ask me to stop humming, please, because the […]

Oh the freedom of self-forgetfulness! Happy Friday, friends!

In the late afternoon, having satisfied my heart on sweet conversation, I convince myself to take our mother-daughter mugs–empty now, but still warm in my hands–to the sink. But in that pregnant moment between the decision and my middle-aged groan, Riley squeezes into the chair beside me. It’s a chair and a half, but there […]

Ready to leave, and I touch his arm, just two of my fingers, gentle, against the bony jut of his elbow. “Don’t you want a jacket?” I ask instead of tell, because this is not a life-threatening situation, and because choices facilitate growth; the understanding that someone else can have a broader perspective, that Love […]

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, […]

In like a breeze after school they come, swift and rattling the edges of things, scattering papers and shoes and the crumpled wrappers from their lunches.  Riley’s cheeks bloom pink with the exhilaration of arrival, as though they’ve been far away and flying and have only just landed home, in from some place now only […]

Her hair blows against my cheek, just one errant, brassy strand.  She laughs, and I laugh with her, taken by those eyes that have always been as blue as the sky just before a storm.  “You know, this is how it would have to be with us,” she says, lifting a hand toward the door, […]

Today, just a prayer, whispered, then fervid and carpet-muffled because that’s where I plant my nose.  I can’t seem to bend low enough to accommodate the feel of Him.  It’s a prayer I need, one I offer often in some garbled, half-torn way. But He knows all the parts, so I don’t have to remember them, […]

Some days just feel bruised—suddenly all purple-black and sore, tender. Putting the towels away, the still-warm stacks soft in my hands, I lean into the linen closet and allow the tears I’ve been swallowing to come, quietly.  At the moment, I am sick with seems and nevers, near-drowning in shadows and struggling hard just to breathe.  I can […]