Dear D,

When you were little you had one of those rubbery seats that lets babies sit up before they are sitting up on their own. It had a little plastic tray attachment for toys or food. We would sit you in there, pressing your thunder thighs into the leg slots, and pile cubed avocado and sweet potato on the tray. You’d squish those...

Dear D,

A friend recently told me about spanking their little girl, who is around your age. At one particular point in the story, I felt my throat constrict and I noticed a tingly feeling in the top of my head. Once alone, I played the scene over and over in my head.

“I asked her to pick up her clothes, and she said,...

Dear D,

I can’t stop thinking about a conversation we had yesterday morning as we ate breakfast on the back patio under a smoky sky. You had just bounded back from the garden where you had been harvesting, filling your skirt with the abundance of the tomato row. When you got back to the table, you held up a tomato and exclaimed,...

Dear D,

This morning you woke early and came downstairs. I was sitting at the dining room table with my coffee (luckily not full!) and laptop tucked in amongst some partially finished coloring pages and an interrupted game of Genius Square.  

We reached out, like we do every morning, to give each other a hug before heading to the kitchen...

Dear D,

This weekend I found myself tucked in amidst people from around the world on a narrow bridge, all of us leaning over the concrete rail to catch the best glimpse possible of the world-famous Multnomah Falls. I’ve been stopping here every chance I get for years, breaking up the long drive through the Columbia Gorge to skip up the...

Dear D, 

Last night when I came to your room for bedtime stories, I found you standing tall with your hand on your hip telling Papa that you WERE big enough for the hand-me-down clothes he had recently stowed in your closet. Listening to your conversation, seeing the focus and resolve in your eyes, I found my heart swelling with gratitude...