Happy Birthday, Jessica!

“You’re being a pain in the ask,” Jessica tells me, and for a horrified moment, I think I’m going to burst into laughter.  That’s not exactly how the phrase goes, of course, and there’s something extremely amusing about my daughter’s serious face as she says it.  She’s resisting bedtime, a thing she doesn’t do very…

Jessica and I are reading the Lord of the Rings series. A couple of months ago, looking for something to do on a weekend, I asked if she would like to watch the movies. “I do not know,” she said. “Okay,” I said. “How about we watch the first one and if you don’t like…

Every other Thursday evening, I bring Jessica to the library so we can listen to the storyteller. Miss Linda is a gentle woman of late middle age, with the quietly expressive voice of an experienced kindergarten teacher. Though all of the other children who come to listen are much younger, Jessica doesn’t seem to notice or…

I posted about last week’s essay on Facebook, and a friend who is dealing with her own such situation wrote, “I don’t know how you keep doing it, keep feeling lucky and keep going. Some days, Jennifer, every step is such agony, and the lack of balance and fairness stuns me into stillness.” I spend…