i lived in three houses as a girl. the very first one stays with me as the truest home. ten years of growing up. ten years of not knowing anything but 7702 patton street in detroit, michigan. i don’t know when it started but i would walk two blocks down to warren road alone with one
Categorychildhood
175 years isn’t enough
pain doesn’t like to be looked at straight on. it’ll distract and deflect and will look in any direction except back into your eyes. that’s what that judge was doing. she forced pain to sit down in a chair and held its face forward, refusing to let it turn away. then the girls could get
frozen in time
the skin on my fingers starts to burn. being outdoors these past few days is a little like the lies i tell myself. they seem like good ideas. they can’t possibly be that dangerous. my boots step onto the snow but it doesn’t feel like snow normally does. i know what it feels like to
lack of love and the holidays
maybe your family tree is a little bit of a thicket. a gnarled bramble of fallen and crisscrossed limbs and branches. the holidays approaching might tick towards you like an unstoppable hour and put your origin story front in center in your mind. just how did you arrive on this planet? its been a weekend
moms forgiving children forgiving moms
i broke ella’s tea cup. she found a set at an estate sale that was pretty perfect and upon carrying it in from the yard, it slipped from my hand. way to go, mom. its tough not to venerate your mother. to gloss over the past and the short comings and hope your own children
hand me that baby!
christmas was as close as i came to jesus as a child. i wasn’t told the story. there wasn’t a countdown to the manger in my house. i didn’t hear about the blessed virgin turned away at the inn ad nauseum. instead my brother and i helped my mom assemble the christmas tree in the
shall i compare thee to a summer’s day?
that will shakespeare really knew what he was saying. “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” ain’t it the truth? i decided that summer is like one long day and by mid-july i knew that the evening was coming on. i told someone my theory and they said, “but summer nights are the
baptizing children
they put her in a white robe. it was her birthday. eight years old. it was easter and she had decided to get baptized. i don’t know what to think about baptizing an eight year old. can a child really understand the decision that they are making? the commitment that they are proclaiming with the
a fairytale they say
the snow started coming down and eleanor wanted to build a snowman with her dad. she waited patiently. she let her wishes be known. she left the request on her father’s ear. we were busy. abe had a dance on friday night. saturday was special olympics and dinner at my parents. kids stayed the night
harry potter and true stories
we walked in a world created in one woman’s imagination. it was a real place. we heard languages from around the world spoken around, all of us lost in a shared reality that has come to mean so much to so many. we’d seen this place in our mind’s eye and now we were here.