August 5, 2014
Elsie had a fever. It came on fast, out of nowhere. She’s so strong, so feisty, a listless look doesn’t fit on her. But there she sat with her shoulders hunched forward and her eyelids heavy, her cheeks flushed. I felt her forehead and said uh oh, here we go. When she gets sick, she gets sick. There’s a good chance she goes so hard for too long, ignoring the discomfort of tired muscles, a sore throat or a headache, whatever her body is saying. That’s what most of us do. Until we crash. We do this in so many ways. So I held her in her bed and “kickled” her back, combed my fingers through her fever-sweaty hair. I sang twinkle twinkle, her favorite. Then her raspy whisper cut through the dark, I love you, Mama. I love you too, My Elsie. ::: First there was the boom-crash and then the tinkling […]
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July 29, 2014
I was folding laundry, thinking, making piles. We don’t have a TV in any kind of way at this new place. It’s been almost two months in here and no one seems to notice. The kiddos have their iPad time and they call it good. They slip-n-slide and sidewalk draw and play some sort of terribly loud game in the basement with big plastic balls bouncing off the empty walls. They play with our new guinea pig, Butterscotch. They argue and fuss and fight, too. We had some kind of contraption hooked up to the Internet that would play us Hulu and Netflix but then it stopped working, so we stopped using it. No one seemed to notice. There are some things that you can pay more attention to if you fold laundry with no TV on. The sounds in silence. The way your body feels too tired to pick up even one […]
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