Parents will find in these essays moments of joyful recognition and compassionate understanding for the unique spiritual adventure of raising children.
There are free companion resources available for this title at the Skinner House Companion Resources page.
Introduction
Waking
Life, Alexandra Fuller
Boundary Loss, Noelle Oxenhandler
Mountain Music I, Scott Russell Sanders
Gardening with the Raucous Fairy, Tracy Springberry
Deadfall, Jack Nisbet
Expecting Adam, Martha Beck
Children in the Woods, Barry Lopez
Palsy, Beth Kephart
Struggles with Love
The Driving Lesson, Gerald Early
Ashes, Anne Lamott
The End of Summer, Debra Gwartney
Civil Disobedience at Breakfast, Barbara Kingsolver
Solomon's Blanket, Marjorie Sandor
Kicking and Screaming (but Going Anyway) , Gina Petrie
The Demon's Looking Glass, Nadine Chapman
Room for One More, Nancy Mairs
Embracing Life
At Blackhorse Lake, Jonathan Johnson
A Theory of Falling Bodies, Cora Schenberg
Ordinary Time, D.S. Butterworth
Saved, Jess Walter
Emmanuel, Laura Read
2:45 P.M. , Marion Winik
Birthing a New World, Rosemary Bray McNatt
The Rabbi's Garage, Betsy Wharton
Orthopraxy, Sarah Conover
Hopey Stories, Brian Doyle
I'd been warned that the day would dawn when my sweet, tractable daughter would become a Terrible Two. And still this entirely predictable thing broadsided me, because in the beginning she was mine-as much a part of my body, literally, as my own arms and legs. The milk I drank knit her bones in place, and her hiccups jarred me awake at night. Children come to us as a dramatic coup of the body's fine inner will, and the process of sorting out "self" from "other" is so gradual as to be invisible to a mother's naked soul. In our hearts, we can't expect one of our own limbs to stand up one day and announce its own agenda. It's too much like a Stephen King novel.
—from Barbara Kingsolver, "Civil Disobedience at Breakfast"
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