Mildred is the loving mother of many children—foster, adoptive and birth. Sean and I met her about eight years ago when she taught a few of our “PRIDE” foster parent training sessions. “Go out into the world and make a difference,” she said at one class, a quote I jotted down that’s been stuck to our … Continue reading
Filed under Life and death …
More Perfect
Today this is how safe my family is: My 2-year-old baby girl skips around the house in lime-green underpants, her family cheering every time she succeeds in making pee-pee in the Elmo potty. This is how sweet our life is: Later, she and my son and his friend take turns stirring a wooden spoon through pumpkin batter, … Continue reading
Opening day
Eleven years ago, I read a book I can’t remember in the bottom bunk of a bedroom I was sharing with my new boyfriend, Sean Flynn. Once the sun lit the room white, the gangle of a man I’d just begun dating sprung from the bunk above me toward the nearby desk and roused me … Continue reading
My wish at 34
34 years old but still living in the same body that first received the tickling warmth of his breath on the lobe of my ear; his lips’ tender press in the crease of my neck. My same back to his belly. My same belly filled, that night nearly 10 years ago, with the warmth of … Continue reading
I may leave, but I’ll never let go
Twelve weeks ago right now I was about an hour away from waking up to the funny feeling of an uncomfortable fist opening and closing in the vast, cramped space between my heart and my hips. The discomfort of that rather obtrusive fist would persist through a long, hot shower, then increase as midnight silently … Continue reading
“The Thing Is”*
The last time I was this stuffed with life my grandmother lost hers. What I have left of her now is a curio cabinet filled with a few photos and mementoes, and her scent secured two years after her death in a plastic bag of her bath towels, which I refuse to wash. Every once … Continue reading
The meaning of my every day
A day without my son is like a day without air. How did I breathe before he entered the world? Every night as his eyes flutter toward sleep I lift him in my arms and kiss his cheek, gently pressing my lips to his impossibly soft skin just long enough for him to shake free … Continue reading
Lake Silverthorn
Much of what’s been on my writer’s mind this past week regards last summer: a summer in which, while hugely pregnant with new life, I confronted the dying and deaths of an uncle and grandma whom I loved very much. Written in honor of my godfather and late Uncle Greg, who died after a brief … Continue reading
Emily Dagostino 