And on this festival day, I am feeling once again my status as the Chief of Sinners, slipping out of the house with unwashed hair in a faded, above-the-knee, sleeveless, beach sundress.

My son makes the sign he learned before he could say his first words, fingers and thumb together at the side of his mouth. He’s hungry. He’s asking.

“It was only love we were looking for….” —Patty Griffin Part of my task at Good Letters, for myself, is to work on my first book. With the ways that daily life squashes my writing time, I’m trying to see these posts as ways into my memoir. The book that I’ve wanted to write, and…

For Easter this year, my older sister gave my two-year-old daughter a potential future heirloom to wear to the midnight Paschal liturgy: a dress of cream-colored raw silk, with ruffles, pintucks, and little puffed sleeves that delicately ringed Anna Maria’s arms. The lined skirt puffed out from the high gathered waist, and in pale light…