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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…
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When I was fifteen, during my sophomore year in high school, my best friend on the swim team quit. He apparently reached the conclusion that spending twenty-five hours a week at practice wasn’t worth it if he was never even going to be able to beat the likes of me, let alone the sea of…
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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,…
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I’ve had about enough by the time my third-grade son’s reading teacher pushes the little stack of papers toward me again. “If you’ll just help him with these questions . . .” she says for the third time. She wants Cartter to speak up more in class, to present himself more confidently. To her, his…
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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…
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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…
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A couple with children the same age as ours, one whose company Danyelle and I both truly enjoy, one we invite over for dinner and drinks; adult friends who fit into our lives in a way that is neither forced nor left over from the time before we had kids – long have I waited…
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“And every evening, when Frith has done his day’s work and lies calm and easy in the red sky, El-ahrairah and his children and his children’s children come out of their holes and feed and play in his sight, for they are his friends and he has promised them that they can never be destroyed.”…
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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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The Raging Elitist 