The Hardest Thing

On Easter Sunday, my husband and I took our children to Mass, as we do every Sunday.  I wasn’t born Catholic, and I haven’t always been a regular churchgoer even after I became one.  But we love our church here, mostly thanks to the wonderful priests who run the place.   I originally became a Catholic [...]

Dear Pat

Dear Pat, I was very sorry to hear of your mother’s passing.  It is such a profound thing, to lose your mother.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re twenty or sixty; it is always hard, always difficult and especially so when you share your home and your lives with each other.  I hope that you are [...]

Bitter

I couldn’t stop. It didn’t matter that my son had called me last night and told me that he’d finally heard from his biological aunt about the funeral.  She had thanked him for his concern, told him of the nice service in the only town his great grandmother had ever known.  She had told him [...]

Instant Message of Pain

I sat in front of the television, laptop balanced on my lap two days later.  It was ten or so, the little ones in bed, my husband in Michigan.  He worked there now, about eight days a month, him having been given the job after all but it being determined that it wasn’t a big [...]

Foreign Family Members

“Well,” Z said through the phone lines, “I think she is going to ask me if I want to come to the funeral.” I pondered that news for a moment, the bitterness swirling in my mouth as I swallowed.  I tried to picture my son going to the funeral of his biological great grandmother that [...]

The 20 Year Old Wound

These days I call him “my eldest”.  It’s innocuous enough to not belie his non traditional way into the world, my nearly 22 year old son.  It still stings every time I hear the phrase, “Wow, you look young for your age” (insinuating that of course I must be older than I appear because otherwise [...]

Not Quite the Fantasy

I walked alone out of the banquet hall, gathering my shawl around me against the chilly Michigan October evening. I wasn’t sure exactly what I had expected out of my 20th high school reunion. I had gone for many of the same reasons that I had gone to my five year one:  to prove something. [...]

Modern Family

“Mom, can you come in here for a sec?” Z asked as I walked by his doorway, laundry basket in tow. R was still at work, late, this being week three of the quarter close, the last week.  The numbers were finalized on the Thursday, and reported to Wall Street at 6am on Friday.  This [...]

“Father’s Day”

“Yeah, I do think about him sometimes,” Zach answered the question. “You do?” I blinked, shocked. I had spent the whole day obsessing on whether or not to write Joe’s aunt now that I had her email address. Which was silly, I had his grandparents’ address and could look up their phone number on the [...]

Internet Searches and Quiet Moments

It was quiet in the house on the mornings the kids were at preschool, and Z was at high school. It was strange , after years of working for Rick while trying to keep the babies occupied so I could spend hours on my computer, that now that I finally did have the time, there [...]