He walks to the door, As if he's just going out with friends. "Remember, mom, when I couldn't reach this lock?" His memory connects with mine. "Yes, I do," I say. The lock clicks, The door opens, He steps through. It's just an ordinary day. A little rain. Cloudy. "I love you, mom." "I love… Continue reading Limping Praise
Sleep is elusive at 60. Whereas babies and children used to wake me in the middle of the night, and after that, teenagers coming in late, now getting up for the bathroom does. Once I'm awake, it's hard to get back to sleep. And then there are the unexplained wake up calls, the ones that… Continue reading The Log
Time stops in the dark. Before dawn, it yawns and stretches. Putters. Lingers. Moseys. Puts on coffee. And sits. Waits. Makes room. I remember endless time before clocks and counting, when the first day of school and the last stretched out like Highway 16, Macon to Savannah. Nowyearscram instead of c r a w l… Continue reading Dark Thirty
The nest is empty. Our last fledgling is settled into college dorm life and has already slept through his first test, while his mama-bird, blissfully unaware, awoke to her to-do-or-not-to-do list, none of it involving him. I've been preparing Stone his whole life--and myself all year--for when he would be washing his own socks and… Continue reading The Purge
I ordered my dream bed from a shop on Etsy, a carved and distressed French Victorian fit for a king and queen…or wannabes. I ordered it in late February and received it sixteen weeks later, a sign that unless the New Jersey shop owners were felling trees and building beds on demand, my bed was… Continue reading The Bed That Wouldn’t Fit
If Mama were still alive this Mother's Day, I'd have a hard time finding the card I'd most want to send her. I would have to make my own, and it would say: "Thank you, Mama, that we didn’t discover any skeletons." That's a Mother's Day greeting I'll bet has yet to appear on any… Continue reading Making Arrangements
Mama is dying. I’m sitting in her bedroom next to her hospital bed, the metal rail cold against my leg. The oxygen tube is bothering her and Vicky, her caregiver, is adjusting it as I write. “That better, Martha?” Mama moans. Mama normally reads a page from her devotional every night with Vicky. When I… Continue reading Troubling Ourselves
