Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests to line their nests Houses may be bought, built, or borrowed. But homes can only be made, and that with ourselves. Or so the ducks told me. They told me without a sound, just simply as they preened and nestled, oil on canvas. The children press in close [...]

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Socks hurl across the kitchen, a hail of chaos splintering morning routine and order. Thunked in the back of head, I spin from sink and into the face of a grinning twelve-year-old. I am set to return with volley of words about maturity and setting an example and simply folding laundry instead of rocking the [...]

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Love is patient. Is there a reason why patience is the first qualifier in the biblical “love chapter” describing the characteristics of love? I wonder. Only because I am a mother who is long on love and, too often, short on patience. I mean, why not first, “Love is gentle,” or “Love is tender?” Or, [...]

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The New Year wears hope like a fragrance. The scent, tender, young, sweet, carries in on the wind, and carries me. So I watch it come, this first day of the first month of a brand new year, breaking over the horizon, breaking up through our jaded hopelessness. Just on the rim of our clean [...]

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