by Emily Wierenga | Nov 9, 2011 | Uncategorized
We’re covered in paint, and the lawn is too, fenced in brown, the geese calling autumn and trees dropping leaves. Everywhere, color. Color is music for the eyes.We’re finger-painting in the grass, my son and I. He’s one-and-a-half and he’s never done this before....
by Emily Wierenga | Nov 8, 2011 | Uncategorized
The wind blows and dry grass rustles, and I run, to the applause of a thousand feeble hands. They’re clapping in the wind. And it’s the applause of the saints. And I think of my mother in law, bowing low on her parent’s farm as a healer from Africa prayed over her,...
by Emily Wierenga | Nov 6, 2011 | Uncategorized
he tells me i have a pretty nose and i blush as though we haven’t been married eight and a half years and i hear Jesus in his voiceand when i swear and yell, so tired of being good, he just holds me, and there is Jesus in his armsand sometimes Jesus smells like...
by Emily Wierenga | Nov 4, 2011 | Uncategorized
She said she wanted me to write something that would help her be a better mom and I was paralyzed. My children are adults, and I’m still looking for someone who will write those words for me. I’m still amazed to think somehow my offspring made it to...
by Emily Wierenga | Nov 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
sometimes all you have is currant tarts and a shared glass of milk, and he gives me the last sip. us sitting in our pajamas in bed, giggling over our midnight snack and crumbs in the sheets and we don’t care.days are crowded with little boy babble and baby...
by Emily Wierenga | Oct 30, 2011 | Uncategorized
we’re drinking tea, the spicy kind that smells of autumn and outside, trent collects colors from the garden. orange pumpkins and green zucchinis and tomatoes, red with taste.we’re sipping autumn in clay mugs and talking about halloween. my friend, when she...
by Emily Wierenga | Oct 28, 2011 | Uncategorized
I’ve never been comfortable with calling myself an artist. When I say it I kind of mumble it beneath my breath and downplay that I could have such a title. I feel like a fraud, that I should have my work shown in a gallery or have...
by Emily Wierenga | Oct 26, 2011 | Uncategorized
i would stand in my Sunday leotards after church on a curb with my pastor-father and mum and my brother and sisters and we’d hold signs that declared truth in magic marker letters, and then we’d go for day-old donuts, until the next year, when we’d...
by Emily Wierenga | Oct 24, 2011 | Uncategorized
i see it in the way mum smiles as though Jesus himself has told her she’s beautiful, the way she dances when she cannot walk, mum who has brain cancer.i feel it in the leaves touching my face, my son tossing armfuls of autumn into the sky. i hear it in my...
by Emily Wierenga | Oct 21, 2011 | Uncategorized
Once or twice a year we’d head to The Plaster Fun House on Shaker Road, select an albino figurine from the metal shelves, pick a palette and settle in to paint at a long, newspaper-covered table. One time I chose a stately Indian chief, painted a regal scarlet and...
