“Call me Mara,” Naomi said. Tragedy chiseled her face and spilled from her lips. Pleasant, the meaning of her name no longer fit. Mara, suited her, for it meant “bitter.” “I went out full and came back empty,” Naomi told them. I know many Mara’s, women and men whose lives turned out so very […]
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The question will come. It did for us as she sat on my lap, her baby-soft hand moved my chin to look at her face. Big blue eyes searched mine, “Mom, how did you know Dad was the one?” The question dug into my heart. I knew how important it was to answer right, even though […]
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My grandson screeches around the room, his dark blue cape flies like a flag behind him. “Quick,” he says in a flutter of little feet and hands, “on the couch.” Because of course everyone knows that it takes a couch to make one safe from the wicked beings invading our world. “Get your feet out […]
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What if Tarzan hadn’t married Jane, the tree swinger? What if Tarzan married Penelope who didn’t share the same desire to swing from a tree? What if she had no idea that people killed spiders with their bare hands and then thought it romantic to hold hands. Perhaps she couldn’t fathom killing a creepy-crawly without […]
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“I don’t want them to have a mother like me,” my daughter said. I sat in a heap, shoulders bent, my right side propped against the hospital bed. The children were always on her mind when thought processes were not drugged by the mass on her brain stem, or the drip in her arm, and […]
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I lay on the couch, one eye open and one shut. An ice cube wrapped inside a damp washcloth balanced on my eyebrow. “I weally sorry, Momma,” he said. His face was level with mine, his eye brows bent into a frown. He peered into my face and focused on my wound. He stood so […]
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The door opened with a bang against my front hall. “Mom!” Something was wrong. My heart revved like a racecar. I wiped wet hands against my apron and hurried to meet my daughter, home from third grade. Charity fell into my arms, a melted puddle of tears. “I’m such a s-i-n-n-e-r!” She wailed. Sobs ripped […]
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“On Wednesday morning, the first rays of sun were peeking around the clouds,” my daughter Charity wrote. “I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Strange dizziness clouded my mind. I have a fever, I thought. I must be getting sick. Objects around me seemed to move with each turn of my […]
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“Hey Sis,” she said to get my attention in the store. She was more than double my age with white hair. She looked like my grandma. “Mom,” I hissed, “don’t call me Sis,” I always wanted a sister. Sisters giggle with you when you are supposed to be asleep in bed. They share your clothes […]
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“Momma,” he called from the dark bedroom. “Is Jesus here?” “Yes, Justin.” “Ok, don’t worry Mom, we just can’t see Him,” he shouted from his bed. I plopped down on the sofa, letting Justin’s words reverberate in the frayed edges of my mind. What he so blithely acknowledged and accepted I needed in every part […]
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