Dakota, my big malamute, is straining at the leash, pulling me forward. But Jessica, my young daughter, is dawdling ten steps behind. As usual, Taz and I are caught in the middle. Taz, my mid-size, part-cocker spaniel, part-chow mutt, stands patiently by my left foot while I sort the others out. I tell Dakota,…
Category: Stories about Jessica
Another story about Jessica
“You’re being a pain in the ask,” Jessica tells me, and for a horrified moment, I think I’m going to burst into laughter. That’s not exactly how the phrase goes, of course, and there’s something extremely amusing about my daughter’s serious face as she says it. She’s resisting bedtime, a thing she doesn’t do very…
Carnations for Jessica
So. Wow. I wrote “For Jessica” as a way to describe to friends what is happening with my daughter and how I’m feeling about it, since it’s very hard for me to talk about it. Then I shared the link on Twitter and Facebook. Of the few hundred people to whom I’m linked by…
For Jessica
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine and I were talking about a study she’d just read, which concluded that people without children were happier than people with children; or, to put it more precisely, despite what conventional wisdom holds, the study found that having children did not increase anyone’s happiness. At which…