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Sometimes, when I have a moment alone with the boys, I’ll be overcome by the impulse to tell them I love them, to which my younger son Scotty might reply, “You say that, but you always tease us.” Scotty is six, and to his mind the ideas of teasing and loving are mutually exclusive. To
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Over twenty years ago, I was humbled by my childhood dog, a golden retriever named Daisy, and ever since, I’ve felt that dogs come by certain kinds of wisdom more easily than humans do. I was sitting on the front steps at my father’s house when it happened. I’d just carried Daisy’s cancer-ridden body to
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When I was a boy, my Poppin would wake me up at dawn to go fishing on the Upper Lake. With the attic fan droning in the upstairs bedroom of the Laundry, the house so named for its use four generations prior, I’d lift my head from my pillow and see Poppin’s hulking figure silhouetted
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Last week my wife and I took our boys to see Inside Out 2, Pixar’s animated portrayal of a 13-year-old girl’s mental struggle during hockey camp. In Riley’s outer world, she’s on the cusp of puberty, destined for a new school away from her current friends, and eager to impress at camp so that she
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I have a little bit of guilt now that I’ve passed the coaching responsibilities for our neighborhood team on to the next person. At first it stemmed from the way the kids looked at me when I walked onto the pool deck, confused, forlorn even. That’s passed, though. Nearing the season’s end, my former swimmers
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After our neighborhood team’s last summer league swim meet, my son Scotty now has a lone blue ribbon stashed in the top right drawer of his desk. In other drawers, possessions like a dinosaur headlamp, a kaleidoscope, and loose batteries all live amongst each other. The ribbon lives alone. Rent is no object for the
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Of all the small joys that coaching youth swimming provides – the smell of chlorine, the sound of 50 little freestylers churning the water’s surface – the most hilarious might be the sight of the children in their swim caps. There’s always a kid who wears his ears outside his cap so that they get
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I remember participating in two graduation ceremonies in my life – high school and college, and I disliked both. Walking across the stage in high school, I felt awkward and unsure of how quickly to move and of what to do with my hands. Four years later I was an insignificant speck amid a sea
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On Wednesday mornings Cartter starts school an hour later than usual, but I always wake up earlier. When I look at the clock and it reads 6:20, I think, “Oh, good, I can go back to sleep for an hour and a half.” Then I lie there awake. Any other weekday, I’d think, “Oh, good,
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The Raging Elitist 