Once more before bedtime, my sweet. Snuggle up here in the rocking [item used for sitting], and I’ll tell you how it happened. Now, where to begin? When we moved to this cabin in the woods? When Sadie and I decided to have a baby? Those are beginnings, too. No? All right, we’ll start the […]
Carrie decides to steal the baby the first time she holds him, his soft, bare head nestled under her chin smelling of soap and sour milk. He is nearly two weeks old, small, still below birth weight and not growing well. Nutrition has ordered him special formula, but it hasn’t helped. She can tell he’s […]
Like the way her voice slides into my ear, my guardian angel with the slight, teen-sized body, with the freckles and dirty-blonde bangs and tender little hands, the pearl-white nails so even. That piping voice, waking me: “Carrie, you’ve got to get up.” The quiet, mature concern of that child-high voice slices smoothly into my […]
By the time they crossed the state line, Deb Burkett’s daughter, Linnea, had just about perfected her list of Things That Could Go Wrong in Wyoming. This was not to be confused with her list of Things That Could Go Wrong in North Dakota (car keys fallen down drop toilet, car died after crunching across […]
Mother’s Day may be the most universal holiday we celebrate as a human family. Nearly 200 of the world’s nations celebrate it, most in May. I remember making crepe and construction paper cards for my mother, with “I love you” scrawled in crayon. I remember learning songs in church and singing them in front of […]
Clearing out the office, you unpack old report cards from public school. A memory twitches about those days. And now, it is empirically validated. You were nothing special. At your best, average, and sometimes not that good. Math, often. Spelling, always. You found basic tasks like tying shoes and complicated ones like literacy challenging. […]