To understand how Jessica managed to wrap me around her little finger and convince me that we should travel to Italy, you first have to understand how much she loves Disney World. That began because she loves Disney movies, which begat an unfortunate fascination with Disney princesses (“Sweetie, I’ve just been asked to work on…

There was a time in my life when I was allowed to have some personal dignity. That time ended the day I went into labor and people started wandering into the delivery room and feeling me up with impunity. So Jessica and I are waiting for one of those damned D.C. subways, and it arrives,…

Jessica is running her finger along the spines of the travel books on the shelf at the bookstore. “Hong Kong,” she reads. “We are not going to Hong Kong.” “Nope.” “Indonesia. Not there, either.” “Nope.” “Italy.” She smiles, and starts lifting books off the shelf and loading them into my arms. “We don’t need all…

On our first day in D.C., I ask Jessica what she’d like to do and she immediately says she would like to see the White House, so we walk over to the concierge at our hotel and he gets out a colorful map and shows in very clear steps how to get there. “Maybe you…

I am standing on a subway platform in Washington, D.C., and trying to figure out how, exactly, to get to the line I want to get to, and Jessica is vibrating with anxiety next to me. “Do you know what you’re doing?” “Does it look like I know what I’m doing?” “Are we lost?” She…