‘Tis the (College Application) Season
Wrapping my head around the application season. One: It’s not about me!
adoption
Danger, Independence, and Safety
The hero, the cynic, and getting through things when others fail us.
His Own League
Recently I got a text message from another dad at school. “My son’s interested in joining/playing baseball with yours, can you tell me more about your league?” he asked. “Also is there a get-together at Fenton’s Ice Cream for the team tomorrow afternoon? We’ll try to make it.” In one way this was not a…
Anniversary, with Tween
It was the 9th anniversary of the day we met, though not our wedding anniversary, which will be 5 years in August. My head spins at how quickly it goes. We dragged the kids to a fantastic Berkeley Cajun place we hadn’t taken them before. Fingers were crossed. A few years ago we were sure…
An Hour of My Own
It’s Girl Scout cookie season, and you’ve got to hit it early and hit it hard. We had our booth set up on Solano Avenue. It was normally chilly for February, but somewhat of a shock after a hot, gorgeous week that was anything but normal. It’s fun to see the girls sell in a…
Scream
It comes in waves. When you watch the ripples on a lake, and two big sets of waves come together and it’s all foamy and turbulent? That’s the state we reached this morning. The screaming was epic. New year, post vacation, then Monday was a holiday. It sounds nice, but getting out of the routine…
Chimneysweep
The first week of school, and other terrors.
Birth Mom
This is the story of a confusing but important relationship. She created two of the best things that have happened to me, my kids. She gave them their lives, and perhaps some of their biggest life challenges. Her own life has been difficult as she tried to overcome addiction and other problems. Pregnant with our…
My Children Far, and Near
We’re just back from a week at family camp. It was our eighth year, and there’s much to love. For one, the corny entertainments. There are singalongs and sketches and silliness that benefit from being performed in such an improbable spot, tucked into the trees in the Sierra Mountain wilderness. There’s barely electricity, but these…
Not Just a Sick Day
No matter how routine life gets, adoption has some special spikes in the road that are as predictable as they are surprising. I doubt I’ll ever be fully ready, but I’m getting better at it. All was calm, almost peaceful aside from the hectic pace of school, work, life. Kindergarten and 4th Grade rumbling along in…
Not Ready For This
The horror movies that scared me most when young (back when I watched such things) were not the “jump out” gotcha movies, but rather the ones where there’s a slow-dawning realization that you’ve missed something important. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the classic. By the time you realize your girlfriend was replaced by a vicious…
The Second-Worst Day
Shayla is attuned to everything going on around her. Precisely aware, for instance, of what her brother is getting away with, and whether it’s fair. But she doesn’t like to dwell on the past, whether 5 minutes or 5 years ago. Her therapist has long tried to get her to talk more about “before” our family, but…
Puppy Medicine
It wasn’t long after we started trying marijuana that we realized we wanted another dog. Even though the pot was being ingested by our elderly dog Finnegan, I’m sure more than one person hearing this news will think we’re high on drugs ourselves, but no. (For the record, the canine cannabis is non psycho-active. You can read more here.) We’d…
Summer Storms and Switching Places
I should know not to tempt fate. Maybe a year ago I started feeling cocky, like we’d gotten this parenting thing down. Nobody knows what they’re doing, of course, but I felt we’re going to survive it—the adults, the kids, our marriage. I felt that everyone will emerge, more or less, unscathed. And of course we…
Four Years
We just saw Laurie Anderson’s lovely documentary Heart of a Dog, about losing her mother and her Rat Terrier Lola Bell, and obliquely about losing Lou Reed. It’s really about memory and loss and the strange business of being alive. Anderson tells this amazing story about a long hospital stay when she was a kid, and while…
She Doesn’t Like Surprises
You can know someone for a long time and still not get it. Last week I picked Shayla up from school, headed to an appointment. I’m sure we’d talked about it, the time, the plan, everything. But from the dark cloud on her face I could tell she was not expecting me. “Poppa is supposed to…
Animal Story
In my (priviledged) experience, you have to look pretty hard in Berkeley to find somebody who’ll object to gays, or two guys raising children, polytheistic and vegetarian. (We’re actually omnivores, that last bit just an example). I don’t think my expressive dance therapy, Ojai psychic, or Reiki training could manage a rolled eye for at…
Spring, Break
Jaden and I were driving back from getting his kindergarten immunization records. He’s off. It’s our second Spring Break for 2015, a bit more pragmatic. We’re getting errands done. When it’s just us in the car, he gets to roll down his window; we drive on the freeway, in mild rain, all sorts of times…
Happy Mother’s Day
Did you ever set out with clear sights and end up doing exactly the wrong thing? I’ve swerved with my 6-year-old, between working to help her face the tragedy of her mom, who not only can’t take care of her, but can’t even manage a visit or card, and letting her forget about it and just be…
The Art of Not Doing
It’s only the first day of the kids two week vacation, and maybe it’s time to admit I’m not as skilled as I’d like to be at relaxing. In my defense, the run-up to Christmas has been quite a sprint: kids’ class parties and shows, present shopping, near-misses with Disney Boxes arriving by UPS, fistfuls…
