Laura Kelly Fanucci
Recent Posts
There are four days in every month that find me, without fail. Day One: in which compassion runs dry and I just don’t care. For crying out loud, is washing your face every the morning really the cruelest, most horrible, scream-worthy request a mother could ever make? Could you finally figure out how to walk and stop…
READ MOREHold on to sixteen as long as you can. Changes come around real soon, make us women and men. I always shake my head when “Jack and Diane” rolls on the radio. Because the memory that comes back strongest of all the times I’ve heard the song, shouted it out with high school friends, yelled it…
READ MOREHow could I help but notice? She flapped her fingers in front of her face as the choir sang, waving her hands spastically, tilting her head to the tune. When the singers paused during verses, she stopped and slumped forward, dark hair falling over her eyes. But each time the piano picked up and the voices rose…
READ MOREI think about them a lot, my grandmothers. I never expected I would, at this point in my life. One died while I was in high school, the other while I was living abroad after college. My life today looks nothing like it did while they were alive, and as a teenager and young adult, I never…
READ MOREIt was an ordinary moment, during an ordinary day, in an ordinary week. (Which, in the midst of life with littles, means complete chaos.) Ordinary is never boring, never dragging these days. Our ordinary is unexpected, our mundane is a mess. With each new dawn, schedules get shifted and plans get changed. One boy rises early, the…
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One whole trip around the sun. That’s how long he’s been a Christian. A year ago we gathered with old and new friends, family from near and far. My mother and I dressed my six-week old son in the baptismal gown that four generations of my family have worn. And a young deacon, an-almost priest we met as…
READ MOREWe go every year. Maybe you do, too. We pick a perfect fall morning, bright and clear. We drive through rolling country roads, farms and hills and trees ablaze with orange, yellow, red. We grab our bags and head for the rows of trees upon trees. We pick, pluck, pause and pick another, piling the apples…
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It started off as a lovely morning. Until. Isn’t that the way it always goes? Until the baby smeared yogurt all over his third outfit of the morning. Until the preschooler dawdled away all our free minutes pushing strawberries around his plate. Until one child cried for help getting shoes on the right feet while the…
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Ironically, they’re the easiest scenes in the Gospels for me to skip over. Yesterday at church we heard the version from Mark. Arguing disciples, who’s the greatest, elbowing each other on the road to Capernaum like bickering brothers: nuh-uh, I’m the favorite. Exasperated Jesus, here’s the least, plunking down the kid in the middle like…
READ MOREI woke up to the litany of names. Maybe you did, too. Every year on this day they wind around me as I sip my morning cup of tea, greeting another sunny September day like that bright one we pause to remember (can it be eleven years ago now?). I listen to the litany. Names…
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Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof… Christ, I’d be impressed if you made it past the driveway. Cracks lined with weeds. Untrimmed hedges. A half-mowed lawn. Plastic children’s toys abandoned to bleach in the sun in that tacky way I swore I’d never let happen in my yard. And if you did…
READ MOREToday I’m doing laundry. I’m shuttling to preschool. I’m catching up on email. I’m nursing the baby. I’m picking tomatoes. I’m prepping for a meeting. I’m paying bills. I’m writing. I’m changing wet sheets, scrubbing oatmeal-smeared faces, washing grubby hands, loading the dishwasher, cleaning up after the dog. Reading and sweeping and meal planning and filing and…
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