Comfort, the word, always takes me back to that uncomfortable place. A hospital bed surrounded by a forest of faces and the smell of alcohol and acetone. They’re removing the polish from toenails and fingernails, making yet another stab in my forearm, trying to pour life back into my body. While life pours into my […]
when you’re crushed and broken
It’s just the two of us for dinner. I scrounge up some chicken, left over from the chicken-with-cherry-sauce recipe from A Taste of Laity Lodge. Only for her, I serve it plain with bottled Hawaiian sauce and no cherries and a broken breadstick with pizza sauce. She skips the asparagus. Then she trades the chicken […]
For National Nurses Week: Through the Time Tunnel (repost)
Monday, September 13, 2010 I enter a time tunnel and stand in front of Andersen Center, what used to be Andersen Hall. I’m surprised that it still stands. I’m overwhelmed. I look up and see my room. On the corner. With the bay windows. I must go inside. But my husband says we can’t. There […]
In Which I Need Easter Every Day
I sit in my mother’s place at the vinyl-covered table, and it feels strange. One day I serve my dad scrambled eggs, and on another he serves me a fried egg. I ask how he makes it so perfect, and he shows me how he baptizes it with water and covers it with a […]
They Call Him . . .
September 4, 2012: Today I’m linking this post with the synchroblog celebrating the release of Inciting Incidents, where six creatives share their stories about collisions of dreams and disappointments, of clashes between faith and the “reality of our broken planet.” Be sure to explore the Inciting Incidents website–including the free gifts and a boatload of free […]
The Ache of Answered Prayer
It never leaves, this ache. I can press it down, punch at it like bread dough, pat it into a nice ball, and cover it up. But still, sometimes it spills. I think of Elizabeth, barren in her old age. Heart and arms heavy with the ache of it. As time passed, maybe she […]
