-

Rounding the bend on Scotland Drive each evening on my way home from the pool, the twinkle of the lights strung around my neighbors’ trees and shrubs arouse no feelings of Christmas cheer, nostalgia, or grinchy bitterness. I look left and right, hoping for something to well up inside me, and I come up empty
-

Starting up the Nix Creek trail that wends its way around the headwaters of Sapphire’s Upper Lake, the boys tromp along ahead of me, little camo packs with sandwiches and waters on their backs. Their jackets come off and go back on again as their body temperature fluctuates in the cool November air. The skies
-

Driving away from the carpool line on a Friday afternoon in early November, the conversation quickly landed on the topic of “manning up.” Upon alighting in the backseat, our first-grader Scotty told of how he had forgotten his lunchbox at recess, and how rather than letting it remain at school overnight for the umpteenth time,
-

During the six-and-a-half years I’ve been observing the behavior of my younger son Scotty, I’ve sometimes thought that the boy might end up being well suited for the theater. Never mind the importance he places on school productions, the way he draws pictures of himself performing in the days leading up to such events, the
-

Driving away from my children’s school on a Friday afternoon in early October, I’m distracted enough to make it the full length of the city’s seawall without fully understanding the discussion going on between my six-year-old in the backseat and my wife sitting next to me. The light rain falling on the minivan’s windshield is




