Do you ever look on your children, and wish they had better than you? Back when we were shopping my embarrassingly confessional first book, my agent at the time told me I needed a ministry to accompany it. She said this as a realist, not an enthusiast. You need a platform to sell your wares. …
Many parents carry within our hearts—sometimes in a cramped and even despairing corner—a vision of what we hope our children will become. This vision lives deeper than our wish that they be doctors or NFL quarterbacks, deeper even than our desire for their happiness. Our heart-dwelling hope is that they will be good and true, that …
My mother died while I was at the beach and so while my children spent their days on the shore, I spoke by phone with the many professionals who position themselves between the living and the dead. My thirteen year-old wanted to build a sandcastle. He has so many preoccupations these days, perhaps chief among …
One of my sons asked about an historical figure, or maybe it was some living politician whom history will soon forget. My son wanted to know whether this man was a good guy, or a bad guy. This is our most fundamental typology for strangers. For all others, it is blood and love. Are you …
The last fortnight was chicken pox time for the Woodlief boys. I have acquaintances who are apostles of all things scientific and modern, and who are therefore appalled that my boys never received the chicken pox vaccine. It seemed like a good decision at the time, given that the vaccine wears off by the time …
Yesterday was Stephen Caleb’s birthday. He’s twelve, and there are now only 364 days between him and the onset of teenagerism, which I associate — at least among American kids — with sloth and self-indulgence, ignorance and idiocy and all-around brain malfunction, the latter now being scientifically proven at last. We are all of us …
Someone told me recently, “You’re a good man, Tony.” This made me think of a James Taylor concert I heard about once. In the hush between sets, someone in the audience shouted, “I love you, James!” Taylor stepped to the microphone and replied, “That’s because you don’t know me.” Do you ever feel some days that …
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 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 …
