Use Your Words

A strange thing has been happening in our home. A strange thing in the bathroom. It started about two months ago. Actually, it started right about the time we found out we were having a boy… Every time I went into the bathroom – morning, evening, in the middle of the night – I noticed [...]

Marriage, Michael

Scars and Stripes

It happened just last week. I was home alone when I first saw the intruder. I had just stepped out of the shower after a nap and was putting on lotion when, as if from out of nowhere, he startled me. For what felt like a lifetime I couldn’t take my eyes off the unwanted [...]

Pregnancy

Dedication

In the year before I became pregnant I had a very specific morning pattern. Every Tuesday morning, I woke up at 4:50am. I went to spin at 5:30am. For an entire hour, I would sweat. Sweat so much a huge puddle formed on the floor.  It glistened as I stared down at it in the [...]

Exercise, Michael, Pregnancy, Spin Class

The Tree Where Unicorns Play

I have never had my own Christmas tree. I have never needed one. The only Christmas tree I have ever known lives in the living room of my parents’ home in Minnesota. The Christmas tree that is the centerpiece of a cherished family tradition. — I was six years old when my mother first said [...]

Becoming, Family, Kindra's Mom, Pregnancy

Dreams, Lies and Gentelmen

The first dream I remember having was when I was about five years old. I dreamed it was a perfectly clear night and the moon was abnormally large – just like in the book with the rhyme about the cow jumping over the moon.  I was standing in the street outside my house.  I was [...]

Pregnancy

Arriving Safely

It was getting late. There was only a moment of pink left in the sky. Except for the bright lights in the parking lot, everything was dark. I was sad to be leaving, to turn my back, to go in a different direction, especially after we had been through so much. I tried to explain [...]

Becoming, Kindra's Dad, Marriage, Michael, Money, Pregnancy

Goal #40

She was wearing a green nightgown when she told him. It was a perfect-Minnesota-summer-Wednesday-night in June. It was 1980.  My father was out with his local league playing a game of softball.  My mother didn’t go.  She had been to the doctor earlier that day.  Softball was the last thing on her mind.  Instead, she [...]