Balance. It’s a thing. She toddles toward me, hands outstretched. My eyes are wide, excited and inviting, “Come on,” I urge with a half whisper. A foot lifts, and then another. A wobbly sort of drunken-sailor-tilt, propels her miniature body. A little too far to one side and then the other, she comes closer. And […]
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“Who do you want to be when you grow up?” I used to ask our kids. I liked to hear all the ideas. Their aspirations swung wildly. Everything had its season, from astronaut on Mars, to archeologist digging up dinosaurs. Who do you want to be when you grow up? Oh, so you think […]
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How is it that a man who hates shopping finds some unexplainable driving challenge in riffling through one bottomless brown bin after another? I watch the man I thought I knew so well, bent over a mountain of boxes. My husband flips and tosses them as if his life depends on it. The unadorned piles […]
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Two favorite features on my nose are little grooves that criss cross the surface. They are barely distinguishable, but I’m proud of them. Both remind me of people I love. One reminds me of a brother’s love and care after a screen door mishap. Since I can’t even remember it, he has always felt much […]
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It wasn’t unusual to hear our house creak, but the distinct soft footsteps on the staircase made my scalp tingle. I stood quietly inside my bedroom on the second floor, then creeped to the door and carefully put my hand to the knob. I held my breath and listened. Was it just the house settling, […]
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“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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