Emma Macdonald Age Novels & Stories

I'm seventy-five, and still learning that love takes more guts than building a business. "Great-Grandma Elena, need any help?" Emma stood in the kitchen doorway in her birthday dress, the blue one with dolphins on it. Six years old today, and already knowing when grown-ups need backup. "I think I'm good, sweetie," I knelt down to her, fixing the ribbon in her hair. "Excited about your party?" "Yep! But also..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "Also hoping everyone remembers to be happy together, even Uncle Thomas."

“Remember when five hundred dollars felt like winning the lottery?” “Remember when surviving felt like the best we could hope for?” We did. We remembered all of it. The fear, the struggle, the impossibility of everything we’d faced. And somehow, we’d turned it into this. Emma was thirteen months old now, walking confidently, saying actual words. “Dada” and “Mama” and “Jake” and, adorably, “no” to almost everything. She had my eyes and Maya’s determination—a combination that would probably make her teenage years challenging but her adulthood remarkable.