It was our last dance recital,

our very last.

She told me,

though I hadn’t asked.

I grew up longing to jump from a plane,

to float to the earth

beneath a

billowing

parachute.

Miss Christian, my first-grade teacher, had a pockmarked face.

A steamy summer afternoon.

We always had a cat when I was a child, and Little One was my favorite.

Maybe his mother sent him.

I never knew. ‍

Miss Simpson taught second grade,

An award for my novel.

My second novel,

my very first award.

I was a sunbeam.

“Do you know how they found Dr. Livingston in the jungle?”

 I’m on the floor,

a board game with a young grandson.

I never believed in the Easter bunny, even when I was very small.

I goofed.  A couple of weeks ago, I spent hours and hours writing a blog to introduce my newest picture book, Our Home, Our Only Home.

Today is the publication day of my most recent picture book, Our Home, Our Only Home. 

My junior year of college had just ended.

Me, brimming with discovery:

It was an ode to my teddy bear.

My mother loved pink, the pink of early dawn

That was my father’s word for her.

“Your mother is stubborn!”

I grew up on my mother’s lies offered up at every need.