The other day Sophie, Ray and I went for a walk. Sophie walked between us, and one point reached out and grabbed each of our hands. “Will we go for walks like this our whole lives?” I asked, saying it as much to myself as to Sophie. “No,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll go for walks […]

one day me and my grandma are going to the mall and we got lunch and then we went shopping for cloths  and then we  went to  h and m and  then we bumped into  Sarah and her mom i said that can i sleep over  together and we went out for dinner we got […]

This morning Sophie stumbled into the kitchen and announced — half awake but smiling — that there are only four more Mondays left in the school year. I looked at the clock and I wanted to cry. Not only because of my worries about junior high, and my mushy feelings about her current school — […]

Sophie spent the weekend disappointed. It began Friday afternoon, when I wouldn’t let her participate in Annabelle’s ballet class. I tried to make it up to her — literally. In the cosmetics section of Walgreens. “I need dark eyeliner,” she told a helpful clerk. “I’m doing a dramatic dance.” The clerk looked at me. I […]

This morning Sophie burst through the kitchen door — fresh from a shower, wrapped in a towel — and announced, “I look like a full-grown woman!” I smiled. Adorable? Yes. Full-grown woman? Hardly. True, she didn’t have the towel draped over her shoulders like a little kid, but at 43 inches and 54 pounds, dripping […]

Saturday was the state Special Olympics cheerleading competition. Sophie’s team bombed. They finished third out of three, winning bronze medals. I found Sophie’s crumbled on the not very clean porch windowsill the next day. No one had even bothered to bring it into the house. A rather sad end to the season, in contrast with last […]