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July 2018

July 09, 2018

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Our son Eric was four years old. My husband George, after teaching all day at...

May 2018

May 22, 2018

Recently Soft Hearts and Thin Skin

I found myself engaged in another maddening conversation with my four-year old daughter. We were...

May 16, 2018

The Life-Changing Magic of Picking Nits

I was at work last Thursday when I received the call from the school that...

May 01, 2018

Sowing the Seeds of Love

My daughter asked me to bring some food to the swim meet when I came....

April 2018

April 16, 2018

Getting Lost on Good Friday

My Good Friday plans got hijacked by 11:00 a.m. I’d forgotten the big “marshmallow drop”...

January 2018

January 04, 2018

“A Pair of Silk Stockings” and Other Frivolous Pleasures of Mothers

After a harrowing weekend of yelling at my children, I decided I needed to take...

September 2017

September 27, 2017

My Kite Boy

This post originally appeared at Good Letters on June 5, 2012. I woke at one...

August 2017

August 17, 2017

Life, Death, Bread, Host

Guest Post by Laura Bramon This post originally appeared at "Good Letters" on August 18,...

July 2017

July 26, 2017

The Baptisms on Pentecost

Our guests at the baptism on Sunday agreed, all of our friends and family, many...

July 11, 2017

The Case For Charlie Gard

Charlie Gard, the English child you see here, will likely die—indeed, by the time this...

June 2017

June 02, 2017

Poetry Friday: “June Prayer”

How to pray for someone bent over by grief when nature is stretching upward in...

April 2017

April 13, 2017

Palm Fronds

My daughter held the palm frond as if she’d never seen such a thing. I...

March 2017

March 22, 2017

The Landscape of Grief

Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a...

January 2017

January 31, 2017

The Casserole Dish Manifesto

By Tony Woodlief. I possessed a consummate ideology before I had children. It was a...

November 2016

November 04, 2016

Poetry Friday: “Winter Song” by Amy McCann

What do we understand? What do we even mean by “understanding”? A poem can pose...

October 2016

October 06, 2016

The Day My Daughter Found Herself

I want you to watch me run. My daughter Becca sent me that text last...

September 2016

September 14, 2016

What My Kid Knew about Kubo

[Spoiler alert: This post is about the end of the movie, Kubo and the Two...

September 07, 2016

I Have No Idea Where I’m Going

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see...

August 2016

August 03, 2016

Maybe the Kids Will Sleep in Tomorrow

The kids are home for the summer, but my husband has remained on the same...

June 2016

June 29, 2016

The Dragon and the Yahrzeit Candle: On Forgetting and Remembering, Part 2

Continued from yesterday. I dive into the pool. My body remembers water. My body remembers...

June 14, 2016

Fifty Shores of Grief

I write this the evening of June 12, 2016, the day forty-nine people died in the...

April 2016

April 15, 2016

Poetry Friday: “The Grackles” by Betsy Sholl

Here is a poem that silently enacts a conversion. The poem starts off with a...

March 2016

March 28, 2016

Fairies and Mystics

On the first day of summer, my daughter created a makeshift microphone in the backyard...

March 10, 2016

Praying the Rosary

By Laura Bramon My first rosary is invisible: a string of children’s voices ricocheting off...

December 2015

December 22, 2015

Prayer: When You Can’t Find the Words, Make Them Up

I spent much of this past summer watching my friend’s three-year-old girl, Mia, as my...

September 2015

September 21, 2015

Let Me Die Like This

When I die, Lord, let me go in a plane crash, spiraling down, earthward, earthward,...

September 11, 2015

Seeking Refuge

By Shannon Huffman Polson I’d just put my two young sons to bed when I...

June 2015

June 11, 2015

Prayers in the River

I stand hip-deep in a river, casting into the eddies. I am not the kind...

June 10, 2015

The Eucharist: Eat, Eat!

By Shannon Huffman Polson We sit in the back pew at church with intention; there’s...

May 2015

May 22, 2015

The Two Lists

Seven-year old Isaiah found a small desk in the back of our garage and claimed...