We were three stair-steps growing up, cousins each a year apart, Gina-Carol-Carla. There were a lot of cousins — thirty-two on my mom’s side — but we were special somehow. Close enough in age and without major personality conflicts, I think. Our mothers mostly indulged us; cousins were safe friends. Sometimes we were all together,… Continue reading In Groups of Three
Category: Family
Ten Days
My husband has been in the hospital for ten days. He went in through ER with an infection in his leg. We were not expecting this at all, let alone for things to last this long. We don't know when he will come home. The boys ask me every day, and I am afraid to… Continue reading Ten Days
These Nights
These are the nights I don’t tell you about. These are the nights that I think maybe, for real, we’re not going to make it. That maybe there was a reason we didn’t get pregnant, and that reason was my total unfitness to be a mother. These are the nights when I know for sure… Continue reading These Nights
Chocolate Mortar
I must have been about a year and a half old in this picture, and I don't remember it a bit. I know I'd seen the picture before, but I forgot about it entirely until I found it in a stack of family snapshots a couple of months ago. Given the news lately, I feel… Continue reading Chocolate Mortar
The Light Behind
I paused at the end of the drive a little more than two weeks ago to take the picture below. I was on my way to a hospital. My niece had a baby on a Saturday morning, more suddenly and traumatically than we had hoped. I got a call from my sister that her grandson… Continue reading The Light Behind