Eden and I are doing homework. He does a lot of it out loud because he has the family trait that he is brilliant verbally but writing things down is almost impossible. Sage has the same thing. I think I did, too. We are highly verbal, abstract, creative and terribly [...]

It is Christmas. Jude and I are not eating with family and friends, because it is a little too noisy and a little too bright. Someone is saving me a plate, they always do, because I spend many holiday meals with Jude. I don’t mind that much. Jude wanted to [...]

I want things to be a certain way. Like everyone, I have expectations. Every Christmas we go to the tree lot, and pick out the biggest tree I can possibly fit in our home. Short needles, no Scotch Pine. White lights, and the ornaments must be just so. Truth be [...]

Jude is excited as we move along the sidewalk, towards the underpass and the lakefront. I am glad we live near the lake. Trails and trees, beaches and sailboats right there whenever we want them. It’s a blessing. I have been counting the blessings lately, cataloging them, sorting through them [...]

Starman There’s a starman, waiting in the sky, he’d like to come and meet us, but he thinks he’d blow our minds… Jude has new clothes. He should be pleased, or indifferent. New clothes are different, though, so it freaks him out. Deeply. “Jude Hills don’t like different,” he informs [...]

I am looking at Neil, my pastor, and my husband like they are crazy. They are trying to tell me that God is in the midst of Jude’s suffering. Also, Don points out, he is not suffering all the time. “What, so only eighty percent of the time? I am [...]

I have been told that I need to find a way to be okay even if my children are not. I am too enmeshed, whatever that is. How separate should I be? Should I stand here? Move back this far? How about here? Yeah, it’s true. If Jude is having [...]

  I have lived in Uptown since the mid eighties. It is different now. Back then it was a bonified ghetto, with burnt out buildings, drunks to step over on the sidewalk and children of drug addicts playing on the streets in rags. Over the years it has changed. Like [...]

Jude wants to go to the park. Don and the boys are at church, where I would like to be, but Jude tends to yell at whoever is preaching to go get him a bag of potato chips. A friend suggested I should just provide the pastors with snacks to [...]

We are at family counseling, and Eden and I are coloring while we discuss the events of the week: Sage’s mysterious broken foot, Jude’s public meltdown that ended in an altercation between myself and a security guard (and how I won said altercation, decisively). Typical Hill week. Wendy the Counselor [...]