From the Caregiver's HAErt
— Danita LaShelle Jones

I’d done it! This time of year, per a family tradition, we end our Fourth of July celebration with a spectacular fireworks show. I spent the better part of an hour a few years ago scouring the internet to find the best one in the city. Soon, we loaded our…

“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 proud badge of being the healthiest kid in the house. Although…

“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 was asked by my fine arts alma mater to travel with…

“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 hadn’t responded with something related to church, I finally registered what…

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 name, it wouldn’t take long for a kid of the late…

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 I’m lucky and snag a coveted window seat, I can look…

“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 they weren’t gone for more than a minute. What movie am…

“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. “You do get a children’s day,” I quipped. “It’s called Christmas…

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 the crowd’s reaction. The featured day of this annual conference (whose…

“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. In this commercial for running shoes, while a montage of Farmer-Patrick…

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, ages 5 and 8, sat on the side of the pool,…

“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 was in full swing, and after several minutes of being in…