From the Caregiver's HAErt — Danita LaShelle Jones

“Mom?” my oldest son’s raspy and weak voice said over the phone. “Can you come pick me up? I don’t feel good.” I had my keys in my hand before he finished the sentence. Our oldest son carries the…

“Do you have your inhaler?” I whispered to the startled child in the dark. At that moment, the rapidly passing highway lights made me slightly visible. I hadn’t thought about that when I reached her seat. In 2005, I…

“What are you doing?” the pastor stammered as he stared at me in disbelief. I’d entered the open door of his office, diligently going over the run sheet for the church’s two worship services that day. After realizing he…

Eleven words per second. The very thought sounds impossible, yet John Moschitta Jr., currently the fastest-talking man on the planet (after the late Steve Woodmore), can do exactly that. While most people wouldn’t necessarily know Moschitta by…

The houses seem so small. That’s always my first thought when I’m on a plane. Usually, if I’m flying out of my hometown, the flight path always takes us over several neighborhoods as we ascend to 30,000 feet. If…

“But I’ve been gone for hours!” the central character will say. “You’ve been gone a few minutes,” another character might reply. And no matter how much the protagonist tries to convince the other person, clocks and settings prove that…

“Too bad there isn’t a children’s day!” one of my children declared. We had just wrapped up a great Father’s Day breakfast, where we had inadvertently referred to the fantastic Mother’s Day breakfast I had received a month earlier.

The music had ceased, and the platform guests were gone, but the audience remained in their seats, slightly stunned at what had just transpired. I stood in the door of the backstage area, still wearing my headset, chuckling at…

“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, kick!” At the time, I didn’t know her name, but track star Sandra Farmer-Patrick appeared in one of my favorite commercials in the early 1990s.

The massive natatorium buzzed with the chatter of children in their swim classes. As a mom of two of those kids in two separate classes, I sat on the bleachers with a good book while my two oldest children,…

“What?” the woman exclaimed a little too loudly. Her proximity to me made the shrillness of her voice even more unappealing. I shrugged and smiled as I braced myself for what I knew would come next. The massive barbecue…

There we were, down to the last few turns of one of the most intense games I’d ever played. My formidable opponent? My unbeatable mother. I’d spent years trying to win against her, but there I was, mere points…