I think this is where we were for Kaleb, I said to Vinnie as we walked into the parlor. Was it the same for Pepere, too? We’ve done this walk before, as a family, too many times in our recent years. Things are blurring together in my… Read More
Dear Lila, Yesterday, you curled on the couch and covered your head with pillows while the rest of us began school. I did not yell. Yesterday, your ears turned deaf when I gently asked you to come to the table. Your weight shifted on the… Read More
Wait. Expect. Ponder. Wonder. Eleven months of rushing, racing, scrambling over top of ourselves, for this. This short moment each year, where we sit and we wait. We expect. We ponder. We see the wintry world through the eyes of our children and through our… Read More
We were eating dinner at a small and dim middle eastern restaurant on one of our first nights in Bucharest. Our professor, leader, guide, smiled kindly at us, weary travelers having just crossed the ocean for this semester in Transylvania. We were talking about how… Read More
I wrote this six years ago, in the fall of 2007 when it was just Alex and Lila: He’s pushing trucks around the house, hiding in duffle bags, zooming over the arms of the sofa, making squealing noises as they try to stop before diving… Read More
Our first was small, adorned with only the small red bows that the store had already tied to its tiny branches. We set on our hand-me-down coffee table and opened stockings on Christmas morning, cross-legged on the floor. Lights and ornaments came. Trees, life-sized ones,… Read More
It has been coming at me from all angles. This concept of bodies, how we are souls poured into vessels. How we are mysteries wrapped in flesh. How we are rulers of our weight, our muscle tone, our ability to clock a ten minute mile.… Read More
Goodness isn’t a lofty goal or perfection. It doesn’t come from a counter-top well cleaned or a cake well baked. It isn’t in a corner office or in a church pew. It isn’t eloquence or poetry or a book well written. It isn’t art or… Read More
I’m thinking of a 1st birthday party, of Winnie-The-Pooh hats and balloons and cake. I’m thinking of my father with his hulking video camera perched on his shoulder, of the dry laugh of my aunt, the blond baby in his high chair, his cheeks smeared… Read More
