Happy Birthday, Jessica!
For my beautiful daughter —
Thank you for teaching me the meaning of joy.
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I am having a bad day. A hard day, following a hard week, in the middle of a hard month. We’re all having days like these, I’m sure, when our usual balms aren’t available. We can’t meet friends for drinks after work, or go to a movie, or run to the gym and punch a…
On the last days of summer
_________________________________ It is a beautiful late-summer Saturday, warm enough for sandals and T-shirts but not too hot. The sky is blue with fat clouds that look as if they were painted on a china plate. Jessica and I are running errands, and she is scheduled to go bowling with a parks-and-recreation group in forty minutes,…
Time for a Jessica story
“Look out for that pole there, darlin’,” I say to Jessica at the grocery store, because she has walked into it before. This is because she is visually impaired, and hates taking her cane when we go places. “You can be sighted guide,” she says to me, which is on its face true; the…
Snow Falling on Dogs
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,…
A promise
Last week I was accused of being incapable of sustained seriousness, which is, as they say, a true fact. I have always felt that life is fundamentally absurd, and I like to have a good laugh at it. (Not that I don’t have deep thoughts. Just that usually they go away after a while.)…
On the rules we live by
So I’m trying to explain astral projection to Jessica, who is possibly the world’s most literal person, which makes this task somewhat more difficult than it may sound, and we end up discussing my spiritual beliefs which are, um, eclectic. I don’t believe in astral projection, although I’m pretty sure I’ve experienced it, and I…