I spend a lot of time telling stories. Reading them, writing them, and coming up with ones I can “tell with my mouth.” Every night Jacob challenges me to dig up a new, untold story he’s never heard before. It started out with just stories about pets I had when…
Back in late May we took a family trip to the San Francisco zoo. It was one of our best visits to date. Uncle Geoff and Auntie An-la-la and Baby Devon all came, too— Devon’s inaugural visit. The zoo had a baby tiger that came running to eat a big…
I’d say when you’re about seven or eight you get to thinking… usually after eating dinner… that your parents unmistakably decided that in order to save themselves the agonizing monotony of doing chores… they should have kids. Clearly this logic is fundamentally accurate. Everyone knows this. Deep inside their being. And…
Back before Jacob was even three, there was this one Saturday where I popped into Flower Flour to pick-up a picnic lunch. Honestly, I was craving their pancake salad which is unbelievable. Yes, pancake salad. I’d almost completely forgotten about this particular picnic except that of course, Jakey remembers it like it…
In the last three or four months, Jacob has actually started coloring. I mean, he’s always used markers to draw on paper and the surface surrounding that which is intended to be colored, but this is different. This is real, quiet, sitting still, absorbed in concentration, coloring. The kind of…
When I was younger I had a lot of binders. Most people who know me can attest to this. And what was in those binders? Pictures I had ripped out of magazines and catalogs of things I liked: interesting travel articles, pretty bathrooms, a cute haircut. I still remember a…
I write a lot about the conversations we have at bedtime in the bottom bunk. In part because I know we’ll look back fondly on this time and wish we hadn’t spent so much time trying to extricate ourselves from the master of slumber deferment to get back to our…
When I was in college I had this little plastic ID holder the size of a credit card attached to a key ring. It held my license, my Visa, a couple of bucks, my house key, and my car key. I’d put it safely in the back of my jeans…
We’ve been a family of loyal swim students for the past 15 weeks, and in that time, we’ve had our ups and downs… our victories and our infinitesimal, I mean incremental improvements. I’m happy to report that last Saturday JJ graduated from an o-fish-al Seahorse to an o-fish-al Jellyfish. Woot-woot.…
He waits nervously in the lobby as employees stream through the front door of the modern steel office building. His new dress shoes feel stiff as he tries to fold his Wall Street Journal back into a neat square but only partially succeeds… iPads are so much better. A young…