motherhood

We didn’t have a hummingbird feeder because I was scared that I would poison the birds. You have to be vigilant, sites for would-be hummingbirders warn, and clean the feeder…

Before   For months, while lying in bed, examining my underwear for blood, and staring at sonographers’ screens, I’ve wondered: when something seismic happens, will I recognize it? On message…

Image Credit: paper.prankster Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” –Psalms 133   When my 11-year-old daughter informed me that she wanted…

Image Credit: Casey Taylor   By freshman year of high school my eldest son had broken more laws, bones, and hearts than any other child in our provincial town. With…

October 24, 2019   Dear Marissa, You know that lonely feeling, the one where your heart hurts so bad it feels like it ruptured? Like in those National Geographic photos…

Freedom. A Blue Jay flew in circles above the birdbath we had in our backyard the day my mother left. She left one cage only to walk into another. She…

My seven-year-old lies on the fuzzy rug in her shared bedroom; the ball of her right foot is on top of her left and her arms stretch out in a…

They say if you want love, to make it. Just before you took your place, I imagined you into my life and paved a chamber in my gut for you.…

When my daughter was two days into her seventh year, my right heel slipped on black ice and my whole body was tossed into the cold January air, my head…

My turn, my turn, my turn! My kids shriek and race around the house, bickering over who gets to use the something next. It doesn’t really matter what it is.…

Paintings by Miriam Feldman   According to Wikipedia, a jumper (person), in police and media parlance, is a person who plans to fall or jump from a potentially deadly height, sometimes…

“You’re a mother now,” the anesthesiologist with the long blonde hair says as I’m wheeled to recovery. Mother. I am a Mother now? Five days before I am a mother,…

Image: Author’s eldest child, Beatrice, three weeks before she died at 35 weeks in utero   James Dean died in his Porche Spyder 500, after a collision at the intersection of…

The fog is thicker as we drop in elevation. I sit down on the snow to fix her goggles; I admire her: rosy lips, white-blond hair coming out from under…