Alzheimer’s is a painful, drawn-out disease, especially for a child caring for a parent in decline. But in a fraught mother-daughter relationship, the disease’s emotional shifts also create moments of unexpected beauty where once there was only tension.

From Eve Andrews, at Grist: “Modern Christmas as its best self, I think, is a celebration of security and abundance and love, but that all takes place against a pervasive background fear that those things might be impermanent.”

“I’ve come to believe that a long hike has a biological cycle. Like almost everything—life, relationships, civilizations, songs, stories, stars—it is born in explosive uncertainty.” At Appalachia Journal, Ben Montgomery writes on divorce, loss, and taking his kids on a 244-mile walk to make sense of it all.

Thoughts from Heather Kirn Lanier, who is the mother of Fiona, a child with Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome: “They are treated, in other words, like banks, where the teacher deposits information and then, at a later date, requests that the information be returned back.”

“After a while, a boy not unkindly asks my daughter, ‘Why is your Mummy in a wheelchair?’ My heart squeezed.” Lorna at Gin & Lemonade writes about talking to her daughter, Isla, about disability.  

“We’re all a little weird thanks to our mothers. I’m carrying that tradition on with my own children.” Mary Laura Philpott, who blogged previously at I Miss You When I Blink, shares an excerpt from her new essay collection at Longreads.