The day after I wrote about the miraculous recovery of Caleb’s goldfish, the damn thing up and died. We had a funeral service in the back yard, beside a tiny redbud sapling. I decided to make it a dual funeral, and include Eli’s goldfish, who died in the middle of the night some weeks before. …
I found myself on a train to the Atlanta airport weeks ago. There was an aggressive panhandler in my car, the kind who stands right up in your personal space and holds out his hand while mumbling about money for food. He walked like a chicken, his head bobbing and feet shuffling as he went …
I keep finding tender purple pansies growing in corners of my yard where they were never planted. Stubborn and fragile, cheerful without cause, they remind me of Caroline. Purple was her favorite color. She used to help me plant the pansies every fall, or at least I think she did, because too many of the …
Sometimes when people learn that I have three boys, they say something like: “don’t you want a little girl to go with all those boys?” I remember when we thought we were in the worst of Caroline’s dying, after she couldn’t speak but before the pain made her scream for hours, I would stare out …
I’ve been sick, the kind that lingers and begins to make you wonder if you will ever feel good again, or if instead something ghastly has hold of you. Nothing does, says the doctor, just a combination of fatigue and virus and various peripheral complications. I hate the feeling of physical weakness; it puts me …
With a sigh she was gone, five years ago tonight. Somewhere in these last years it became true that the time since we lost her is greater than the time we had her. I’ve come to measure the years by this date — what has happened since she has been dead four years? And five? …
Ever put off writing a letter until you have the time to make it really special? Then the next thing you know, eight years have gone by, the person you were going to write to hates you, and you can’t remember what you wanted to say in the first place? So I’ve been meaning to …
It’s late, and Caleb should be asleep, but instead he’s awake and in our bed, curled up in my arms. We talk about his day, and about the difference between a beard and a moustache, and about pizza. He’s so little in my arms, and getting so much bigger each day. Sometimes I see him …
I haven’t written much about Caroline for the past year. I felt like I should just be done with this. So I put all my energy into other writing. But she is always there, lingering in the back of my mind. Sometimes she is an image, sometimes she is an invisible presence, but she is …
Charles Dickens wrote of children: “I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.” Fred Rogers was loved by millions of children, and his life was no slight thing. He has left us today, and the world is much poorer for it. …
Thirty years ago on this day, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the writers of the U.S. Constitution intended for citizens to have a right to terminate a baby inside the womb. The justices opted for the clinical-sounding term advanced by abortion advocates, “fetus,” which is Latin for “baby,” and in two …
I came across this essay (via Curmudgeonry) by New York Times columnist Bill Keller, explaining the decision he and his wife made two years ago to abort their malformed child. It is thoughtful, and clearly painful for Keller to have written. It is also profoundly wrongheaded. Keller directs an obligatory slap at pro-life advocates (what …
I have an apartment over my garage. The illegitimate and ill-behaved children of the girl we gave a home to for several months had pushed out the screen on the door, so last night I went up to fix it. My two year-old, Stephen Caleb, demanded to accompany me, having grown tired of splashing about …
