One of my fondest childhood memories is the ride to Grandma’s house on Christmas Eve. All of us bundled up inside the Monte Carlo, music crackling over the AM station, my mother and stepfather smoking like chimneys. I can still feel the sting in my throat, the sensation of slow asphyxiation, the desperate involuntary eye …
Last night the boys and I played a rollicking game of Sorry. It went something like this: “ONE!TWO!THREE!FOUR!ELEVEN!NINE!…” “Isaac, slow down. Count one for each square.” “Okay Dad. ONE(whack)TWO(whack)THREE(whack)…” “He’s shaking my pieces off the board!” “Gently, Isaac.” “Okay.” (whispering) “one(tap)two(tap)three(tap)…” “Your turn, Eli. “Eli… ” “Eli?” “Elijah!” “Oh.” The boy draws a Sorry card. …
Newsweek reports on recent research indicating that contrary to popular opinion, having children makes people less happy, at least until the children leave home. This will no doubt please the happily child-free, who seem to have a thriving set of self-satisfied communities. Unlike many of my fellow breeders, I feel no desire to persuade the …
A new study argues that single parents cost American taxpayers $112 billion, in the form of welfare, education, prison, and other expenses. There’s also a pernicious estimate of foregone tax revenue, as if it’s unproductive fellow citizens that cost you and me, and not a cabal of Congressmen who spend our money like drunken New …
I didn’t know somebody had invented a test to measure narcissism. Even better, researchers have been administering it to college students since 1982. The shocking news this week is that recent results confirm a trend: today’s college students are, on average, more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors. The researchers blame everything from permissive parents …
My writer friend Darren Defrain recently turned me on to Andre Dubus, and so I’ve been working through his stories and essays. He has, as another writer friend describes it, a lyrical voice. You can see faith in his stories, along with doubt, and the grit and ugliness in life that makes faith the anchor …
Cathy Young, whose writing I sometimes enjoy, suggests in her Reason Magazine essay that the wildly popular Dangerous Book for Boys is dangerous indeed, because it reinforces traditional sex roles. Why couldn’t it have been titled “The Dangerous Book for Kids”? In service to this question, Young quotes a female friend to great effect: “‘Where …
Eli woke up crying last night, growing pains in his legs. I remember those pains, and my mother giving me two chalky St. Joseph’s aspirin, the ones with orange flavoring. There’s something about being cared for by your parent in the middle of the night that almost makes the hurt worth it. So I gave …
Caleb is learning to play chess. I realized this weekend that he often thinks three moves ahead. I will not lose to a seven-year-old. I played in a tournament once, and lost to a fourteen-year-old. That was humiliating enough. The first time I realized there are people smarter than me — people who simply have …
I’m learning patience from the lady who is teaching Eli how to play the violin. She is a long-time public school music teacher, the kind we wish or imagine still ran things there, kind and competent and able to talk to little ones in a way that makes them feel listened to and special, yet …
They say that the insane and geniuses are alike in that their minds make unusual connections between ideas. The good news is that I may be a genius. The bad news is that insane people often imagine that they are brilliant. Regardless, I noticed what seemed to be a common thread running through three seemingly …
I’m sitting in an airport restaurant near three men, three boisterous men drinking at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday. The oldest, who appears to be about thirty-five and dressed like he’s twenty, is instructing the others on the tragedy of fatherhood. “My advice,” he says, “is not to have kids. Or if you have them, …
We are potty training the imp. Our method has always been to let the child run about naked from the waist down, so that when the need hits there is an immediate awareness of no diaper. This means lately I’ve been greeted when I get home by a chubby little monkey in a sweatshirt and …
I promised my subscribers (that’s right – if you send me your email address I eventually add you to my notification list, which means that you’re updated when I post, usually in the form of a snarky little one-liner direct to your Inbox) that the next post would involve little boys and goldfish. I’m not …
Word to the wise, formulated during my morning jog: it’s probably not a good idea to give your daughter a vanity plate, or any type of gear for that matter, that says: “Princess.” Because she just may start to believe it. Do you want your daughter to be the princess of your heart? Absolutely. Do …
Last night we went to The Prairie Rose Chuckwagon supper, where they feed you brisket, beans, and biscuits until you pop, and then sing cowboy songs. Caleb and Eli went in their cowboy gear: big hats, shooting irons guns strapped to their waists, clippity-cloppity little cowboy boots on their feet. Isaac had no guns, just …
I’m the designated bather in our house. Sure, sometimes the wife has to bring it, but on a daily basis, I’m the go-to guy. Okay, I lied a little. We don’t wash our kids every day. With the onslaught of summer this will have to change. These are some grubby, grimy little babies. I plopped …
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 return to the bathroom where only seconds before I had stationed Eli in front of the pot with instructions to tinkle before bedtime. This is important, you see, because otherwise he forgets to go until he is playing with giant chocolate Lego blocks in Dreamland, where instead of toilets they have golden trees that …
Something inside draws us home. Last year, two swallows built a nest on the narrow ledge above my front door. We tried to shoo them off, used a broom to sweep away their construction a few times, but they just kept rebuilding. They kept on keepin’ on, as Caleb might note. Eventually they won, and …
Some things are stitched through your life like a thread. I’m thinking of railroad tracks, which really are like threads, or perhaps great running scars. I learned to fear them when I was little; my grandmother would remind me often that her father was killed at a railroad crossing, run down when she was only …
To be a proper parent, contrary to what one sees any given Saturday afternoon at McDonald’s, is to train one’s children. What they don’t tell you before they let you take the kid home from the hospital, however, is that being a parent means being trained by one’s children as well. The question is, who …
I don’t have any illusions about the most popular part of this site. It isn’t my insightful social commentary, or my witty dissections of twisted authority figures. It’s the little guy in the pictures at the bottom of the page. So, here’s a little Caleb for you. As we settled into our flight last week, …
