A text message from a girlfriend this weekend: I’m so heavy today. I didn’t sleep. All I could think about were the people being turned away. — I imagine you’re heavy today, too. I imagine you’re doing your best to decipher the news. I imagine you’re doing your best to put on a happy face
I haven’t been writing things down. There are so many things I want to write, so many thoughts I’m trying to catch in the kitchen while the potatoes brown, so many ideas that come while I’m rocking the baby. They come and they leave, and I’m left standing in the kitchen as the skillet begins
We turned on the Christmas music early this year. Just-after-the-election-early. By Thanksgiving, we’d already rotated through our favorite albums oh, two or three times? Dean Martin’s on round seven, currently. It just seemed we could all use a bit of soul salve. — My ears were tired, that’s all. In my inbox last weekend: Did
It happens every year, without fail. Around early December, Ken will peer at my phone on the kitchen counter and see dozens of incoming texts from my friends’ husbands. He’ll raise an eyebrow. Gift suggestions, I’ll say. For all of them?! he’ll ask. Yep. All of them. It’s what I do, I suppose. Some girlfriends
Mom? Can God turn himself into a wall? The question arrives from a backseat littered with cashew crumbs and flashcards atop CDs and board books. We’re on our way to a family reunion in southern Indiana, and I know we’re getting close because the hills make our bellies jump. What do you mean? I ask
“You have almost three dollars!” I tell her. We are sprawled on her bedroom floor amidst blocks and books, stuffed animals and blankets. Loose change is stacked into tidy piles at our feet – quarters, nickels, dimes, pennies – mountainous treasures to my 4-year- old daughter, Bee. “I am ready to spend it, Mom,” she
So, if you were to come to my house for a cup of tea, I’d apologize and say I don’t carry the stuff, not at the moment. Coffee? I’d offer, and pull out a cold brew from the fridge. You’d find me wearing an old pair of men’s boxer briefs, no bra, yesterday’s hair. I’d
“I am what I am. To look for reasons is besides the point.” Joan Didion wrote this. — Still, we find ourselves continually looking for reasons. We search and peer and squint, pointing our finger at just one more circumstance, one more habit, one more practice that we could – should? – change in order