We missed our appointment after lingering at a fixer-upper full of possibilities, some magnificent, others terrifying. The agent made us wait outside.
I found her at the kitchen table with a yellow legal pad.
Big mistake, I think, treading rough surf on an unguarded beach in Maui. The water’s too deep for a little boy, too wild for a grown woman who still doggy paddles.
The driver was trained for this, and I was high in the back, protected. But then, there it was.
“I was a drummer,” he insisted, drawing my attention from his bulging belly, skin taut like a snare but less tympanic. My first solo paracentesis had history, jangling my nerves.
I ran barefoot across the street and yelled, “I’m a pediatrician! It’s going to be okay.” It wasn’t okay.
The phone’s ring pierced my mental fog as I lay in the hospital room.
“Alexa,” I call out. “Set the timer for five minutes!”
We’re scared of waves slinking up the shore, with each salty breath gasping and spitting foam …
I said I’d foster one adult cat, yet here I am taking three.
My seven-year-old and I arrive at our traditional pumpkin patch. She picks out a huge, tall monstrosity.
I climb aboard the giant orange pillow, socks sliding on the rubber, and find my spot in the jostling hordes.
My dad rented out part of a resort. Loot bags, each waiting to be taken home by a party guest, stand neatly arranged in rows, like soldiers on a training field.
A hand-stenciled sign planted beside the tree read, We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was anxious and bumbling. Compulsively feeling his forehead for fever. Joining him in crying jags.
Father motions her behind the steering wheel. We’re on the field he graded with a landing strip in mind, so where’s the harm?
My loving, difficult sister offered to come the weekend before my first child’s birth.
My 77-year-old mother and I have a system: She texts me an emoji every morning when she wakes to let me know she's alive, and I text one back as a receipt.
Miss Harvey announced that Bobby’s parents wanted to dedicate a tree for him. He was in our class before he died.
“Uterine atony,” I hear the doctor say as the neonatologist is showing me my brand-new baby. I glance at my blood pressure before looking at my son.