savagemama

So here we sit again. Pond. Farm. Grandma’s house. More Dora the Explorer. Lucille woke up with another fever last night. I heard her tossing and turning. A clear sign she’s uncomfortable. Then I heard her little moans. A clear sign her temperature is going up, and fast.

“I want some water mama,” she said. So I took some water to the edge of her bed, pushed back her bangs and felt what I already knew to be true. She was burning up. Her hair was wet. Her hands shook as she brought my water bottle to her lips. “I want to get in your bed,” she said. I scooped her up and put her on my pillow. “I’m cold,” she said as she shivered into the blankets.
Read the rest of this story »

My neighbor has something I want. I’ve always known she had one, I’ve seen it sitting by her house ever since we moved here. But it’s only recently, only since she put a for sale sign in the window, that I’ve started to covet it. It’s green and looks nimble enough. It’s a Toyota, which is a big plus in my book and it looks like it could haul about 12 children with their various bags, coats and the occasional forty pounds of art projects they bring home.

It’s a mini-van. And I really want it.
Read the rest of this story »

I do not care for Dora the Explorer yet here I sit in the middle of the day watching her. Lucille is sick again.

It’s not that I don’t like Dora, I guess. She’s a perfectly fine, perpetually four-year-old, outdoorsy little thing spouting Spanish, it’s just that, as one friend said, I feel like we get more stupid by the minute every time we watch Dora videos. And I’m feeling pretty stupid these days. [Read More]

I remember when my parents delivered me to the University of South Carolina. They lugged at least an elevator load of stuff up to the fourth floor of Patterson Hall and helped me unpack a few things. We made my bed awkwardly each unsure of our now-changing roles. In a few minutes they would leave me there with my roommate and best friend from high school hoping that over the last eighteen years they’d remembered to teach me everything I supposed to know to make it own my own from that hot August day forward. I was too young to understand their tense faces or the endless list of worries that must have been filling their heads and quieting their voices. I was excited. Period. I’d see them the next weekend, I thought. Big deal.
Read the rest of this story »

A friend of mine is rounding the corner on her third trimester, expecting her first baby. I’ve known this woman for going on ten years now. I’ve followed her through slot canyons in Utah, I’ve watched her huge smile turn small as I stepped backwards off a rock in Central Oregon, rappelling to safe ground. And last summer she gave me a pinch on the butt as I ran the last quarter mile of Missoula marathon.

“You’ve got this Savage!” she said.

Read the rest of this story »