Two years ago at this time in mid-September, I attended funeral services for a young man named Josh who was the oldest son of family friends and the older brother of a good friend of my youngest son. Josh was 31 and had struggled for a long time with addiction and depression. I don’t know […]
Today my 13-year-old son and I were at the grocery store, and he bumped into one of his friends whom he hadn’t seen for a while. His friend apparently said to him “Oh yeah, the last time I saw you was when your parents attacked me.” I remember it clearly. We were having dinner and […]
I pedaled hard. I furiously rode. I rode my bike towards the edge of town. The town where I was raised, but I was still a child. I rode and rode and dropped my bike and abandoned it by the side of the field. I had not yet been to the edge of town alone. […]
Most of us have a youthful time in our lives that we look back upon fondly, even if it was fleeting or fraught. This period in our life is often characterized by experimentation, falling in love, creativity, or travel, but mostly by a sense of unbridled freedom and a feeling of endless possibility. This time […]
Yesterday my partner Werner and I visited the small apartment where we are told his father has lived for the past four years. Werner’s uncle called a week ago to tell him that the medical examiner’s office was looking for him because his father had died. Werner was apparently the only known next of kin. […]
There’s a story a man has told for most of his life. He has changed the story to suit himself as he’s grown older and wiser and gained life experience. He knows the story intimately, yet he doesn’t really know it at all. While he believes in his story, he is aware that it could […]
Several days ago I wrote about how my children witnessed the aftermath of a shooting in our neighborhood. If you want to read about it, you can click here. My kids are processing their feelings about it in different ways. My 17-year-old daughter had horrible nightmares a few nights ago. She dreamt about stepping over bodies after a massacre at a […]
When my first child was born 20 years ago, “attachment parenting” was a new and somewhat controversial child-rearing philosophy which involved strict adherence to a demanding set of rules and behaviors including: natural birthing, leaving boys uncircumcised, babywearing, breast-feeding and child-led weaning, co-sleeping, not allowing babies to “cry-it-out”, practicing positive discipline, and so on. While I didn’t like to put a label on the way I […]
Phone calls at five o’clock in the morning bringing news of the death of a loved one by crocodile attack tend to have a life-long PTSD effect on a person, at least that’s what I’m noticing. Thus, when my phone rings unexpectedly, I instinctively brace myself emotionally and listen for any sign of bad news about to […]
Yesterday was my daughter’s first day of her junior year of high school, and my son starts his 7th grade year at a new middle school next week. I’m in the middle of a rude and abrupt awakening from the endless-summer fantasy I’ve indulged myself in these past few weeks. Like always in the month of August, I’ve had that stupid “mother-amnesia” thing […]
misslisted 