#babbleliciousness

[whiteelephantintheroom]

Instant Miracle: Just Add Tumblr

Only 48 hours after appealing to the Internet, Flyleaf Books just announced my in-store reading via Twitter!

On Sunday, May 19th, I'll be reading and signing books in Chapel Hill.

I will be hugging ALL of the faces.

You guys are the heart-shaped reason this is happening.

You make the impossible...possible.

[ipromisetowrite]

@babbleliciousness

Dear Jessica,

Thank you for the comment on my picture of William holding my hand. He often falls asleep on me this way and I treasure it every time. I love the picture of your grandmother's hands. It is beautiful. I've always loved photographs of hands and it was a focus of one of my photography projects in college.

One of my last memories of my father's mother is holding her hand. She was sick for a full summer and passed away shortly after I returned to college that fall. I was one of the only people who didn't get to fully say goodbye. The last time I saw her I sat on the floor next to her chair and held her hand because I didn’t know what to do or say. I can still feel her smooth, fragile skin under my thumb as I swept it across her veins. She had lost a lot of weight and as I sat there holding her hand it hit me how sick she was. It was as if decades of holding her hand flashed in front of me and all of the previous plumpness melted away in my grasp. Her freckles and sun spots and fingernails were the same but there was simply less to her than there once was. If I could I would travel back in time to capture her hand in mine in a photograph and if I had that photograph I would look at it often.  As it is, the memory sits firmly in my heart like a picture because I wrote a poem about it at the time.

Hands are so important. Holding hands is so important. I hope you get to hold your grandmother’s hand many more times! My prayers are with you and your family.

Sincerely,

Liz