“It’ll get better if you get closer.” John’s mom laughs as she untangles five-year-old John and Malakai, two boys practicing for a three-legged-race at a community gathering. But our Malakai’s close to tears as I unknot him from a snarl of arms and legs and feet. “Really, if you’ll get closer, put your arms around [...]

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Young hands celebrate September with posies of pink erasers budding on the end of slim yellow stems and hours dressed smartly in routines. It’s the rite of back-to-school days:  the folding open of fresh notebooks, the lacing up of maiden shoes, the packing of new lunch bags. It’s the ceremony of new school days. We [...]

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I have flailed and I have failed. Too many days I have meted out grating cacophony, loose and disordered. There’s a time to stir porridge, but someone howls, “I can’t find socks!” and I’m digging about for two purple ones the same size, preferably holeless, to soothe teary angst, while oatmeal burns black. There’s a [...]

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I remember that place, that deciding place of how to educate our children. I remember its weight. I recall standing there with pudgy hands wrapped around my leg, peering down that road diverged in the yellow wood. Unsure of the next step, the faint whisper from a faint heart came, “Which road for us, Lord?” [...]

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“Gather and knot.” That’s all I ask them. It’s all anyone will ever ask of them, really. So they try. First, young eyes and minds gather. Stretching fingers of tree limbs catch sky, saturated in blues. Green’s but a fleeting whisper through the woods, the sky all loud and showing through.  I watch them see. [...]

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