“So,” she asked, “are you beginning to feel settled yet?” How do I answer that, I wonder? Should I mention we haven’t even carried our furniture up from the basement because first we have to paint the walls and redo the flooring? Or should I begin with the re-wiring saga, or drywalling? Maybe I could […]
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“Nothing of value has changed,” he said leaning over our daughter. His young face was earnest and sincere. His blue eyes searched to connect with hers, foggy and distant. Day after day another ability vaporized into thin air. She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t move her arms. Her words slurred. All of her body parts conspired […]
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It was a tiny village, not much more than an intersection with a few stores. When we moved into the area, the only American family in Magazzino, Italy, we gained immediate notoriety. I could feel the tension rising every time I stepped into its little corner grocery store. The husband and wife who owned the […]
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“What to do when life is miserable,” I suppose there are those of you out there that don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve never had a miserable day in your life. I will not tell you how I feel about you. But to the others, the normal among us, sometimes life can be downright […]
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So, I cut his roast chicken. Into little square edibles. When I looked up, he wore a puzzled expression, a little worried but seriously amused. I drew my eyes back down to where mangled bits of poultry lay in a pile on my husband’s plate. “Hmmm,” he commented. “Maybe you need a day off.”… Read […]
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A finge of black lashes, thick and long shadow his blue eyes. They only partially hide his hurt and uncertainty. They tug at my heart like a messy knotted umbilical cord. “…For the Lord…” Did I do right to correct him? Was he wounded too deeply, was I too harsh? Did my words match the […]
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Her name was Candy. I couldn’t describe her if I had to. I never knew the color of her hair, the width of her smile or touch of her hand. Because she didn’t exist. Yet, every meal time for months, she sat at our table, while my three-year-old conversed with her. So convincing was our […]
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“Pick me up,” my grandson says. He reaches little arms high, and his mommy leans down, puts her hands against his solid tiny body. Her brown hair swings forward and covers the smile I know is there. With a heave, she swings him into her arms. He not much more than a baby, but he […]
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Our middle daughter was about the sneakiest two-year-old imaginable. Quiet, sweet and oh so cunning. But the one sneak I never got used to was the tip-toe out of bed escape. Because she did it so quietly. So unexpectedly. So good. I would round a corner and there she’d stand like a flat Heidi against […]
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There’s a U-haul behind us. I will be home someday, and when I am, the U-haul’s not coming. We’ve been planning this move for a long time, still I feel like it snuck up on me. The details of up-nesting are upsetting, bordering pure torture and filled with absolute mayhem. “Where’s the permit? I put […]
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