Most mornings I meet these ladies somewhere in the kitchen. They stumble out, red hair a mess, asking if they can help mix up this or that even before they can keep their eyelids open. We talk about how we slept and Ruthie usually tells me that she was woken up either by Mabel Howard…
… to have your heart filled in the middle of the filthy laundry pile… … to see the work of a lifetime in the dishes, school books, and tears of the everyday… … to traverse the depths of our depravity with sticky hands on your apron… … to fight for them, first with love and persistence, but in…
This was written last Friday. The wood stove hums away with pots of water heating on top and the youngest children are engaged in a lively game of chase. Stewart has gone to pick up hay and I will split my day between bringing in firewood, answering questions about diagramming sentences, snuggling little Joshie, and…
I realized recently how many things I have forgotten: What it’s like to flush a toilet… how I never used to hear that sleepy breathing of our children as I crawled into my own bed… that everything begins at home… how I could pull the first string that could be the unraveling of my own children. *** It’s funny to watch them…
