It’s a long time that I’ve loved you. Never, never go away. – “Love Song of the Little Bear”, Margaret Wise Brown An ash leaf drifts on the surface of the water, vermilion and thin, as the sand sucks slowly at my ankles. The bay’s chill embrace beckons with curling fingers, veins of sand running…
The bay is breathing swell upon swell, my mind is seething words cannot tell. Rush, rush. Pedal like fury arrive by the tide, settle the hurry breathe and abide– Here lies your home. Hush, hush. Through bud and bone, Rush, rush. Let the current flow, dimpled knees and river stone. Yes, my love, I know,…
In January of 2020, Cece and I spent a month visiting my grandparents in Florida, planning our return for early February, when we were scheduled to visit NIH to get Cecilia tested for a genetic disorder that may possibly be affecting her eyes. I spent much of that month fielding comments and questions from well-meaning…
Dear Lizzy, It has taken me several weeks to work up the courage to write this letter, and it has proved even harder than I feared. I have been comparing Cecilia with you since she was born and even more so upon learning of her diagnosis. I have been trying to replicate experiences which you…
If you can’t fly, then run; if you can’t run, then walk; if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward. – Martin Luther King, Jr. July 2013: Sweat beads on my brow, dripping to pool above my lips, gathering in droplets on my nose. My breathing grows…
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. – William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” I’ve had…
There is a wrongness about death that feels inescapable, as illogical as this is. The entire structure of the created world is that of decay and regeneration, and yet, the death of a human person feels like it must be avoided at all costs. We cannot accept it. Something about it feels unnatural, wrong, inhuman….
As human persons, we are born with an innate incapacity for self-regulation. Our initial understanding of self exists only in reference to our mothers; we are inescapably relational creatures from the first stirrings of conception. An infant can no more control his or her emotions than cause the sun to rise and set at will….
For the newly postpartum mother, the exact tone, pitch, and key of her newborn infant’s cry can trigger panic, milk, and tears simultaneously. This is not coincidence. This is not emotionalism. There is nothing in the world like the cry of a newborn mammal, and there is no one in the world more equipped to…
The Latin root for the word compassion is pati, which means to suffer, and the prefix com- means with. Compassion, originating from compati, literally means to suffer with. www.compassion.com There are places in the human heart too raw and terrible to be translated into speech. There are times when the pain of a loved one is so mammoth…