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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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I’m trying to teach Cartter respect. He whines too much. He argues. Sometimes, when a new adult speaks to him, he squints and contorts his eyebrows and upper lip so that he looks like a blond, incredulous David Schwimmer. It’s the kind of look that says, “Do you see what you’re doing to my face?…
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Danyelle put her finger on the issue first. It was after the kids went to bed Saturday night. I’d read them a story I wrote about my admiration of their brotherhood, and they’d been quiet, still, listening intently. Unbeknownst to me, Cartter had been shielding his face from his mother, focusing hard on hiding his…
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One of the very few times I ever set foot in the Lupton cabin to the left of number 10 at Augusta National, I met former USGA President Buzz Taylor. I had no idea who he was. My dad had just mixed about a gallon of gin and tonic and was standing slightly behind me…
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The boys’ idea of domestic bliss is something like a dysfunctional couple that’s alternately fucking and fighting, the cops a regular presence at the front door. Violence is just part of life. You wrestle. You rip out a chunk of your combatant’s hair. You claw your opponent’s flesh. If things swing too far out of…
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For most of Sammy’s life, she’s spent the night separated from us by a baby gate. It allows her free rein of the living room, kitchen, and den, and it allows the rest of us to sleep. Sammy wakes at odd hours, and somehow, she manages to be extremely loud while making hardly any noise.…
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Some jobs beg to be properly completed. For instance, there’s a certain pleasure to the trancelike state you experience washing windows, but the real prize is stepping back and admiring the finished product, your mind as clear and renewed as the freshly cleaned glass. The last thing you want to hear when you’re basking in…
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